Love Your Ghurka
Pokhara is Nepal's second city, nestling in the Kathmandu valley. I took a bus from Kathmandu and the scenery along the way was lovely, all green and leafy and sunny. Even the air was clean, though ater getting of the bus and wiping my face I discovered that the air was mainly diesel smoke but the buses here are not really tuned that well.
I had met up with someone on the trip through Tibet who was doing volunteer work in the town and had heard much about it so my expectations were high. The main town itself is a busy Nepali town with the usual shops and Internet Cafes, though if you go a few kilometres down the road towards the big lake you get to Lakeside; a very peaceful and almost rural part of the outskirts. It is here where I stayed for a week.
The main change for me was that I was actually able to sleep at night without traffic noise or the crap band in the adjoining hotel making a racket. In Lakeside all you could hear at night were the creepy-crawlies and cicadas making their noises. If you looked outside towards the lake at dusk you could see the fireflies dancing around - this was my first time seeing a real firefly and I got quite excited. Fireflies look great at night, though if you reach out to touch the tiny floating fairy light you realise that the bug is about the size of a Volkswagen and has fangs, at least that what I thought I saw. It was one one of these cool evenings that I proclaimed Pokhara to be a Paradise - even the toilets are western-style.
The main drag along Lakeside is full of good quality restaurants serving nice approximations of western food, mainly Italian and Israeli funnily enough, with cold beer and cheerful staff. You can easily stay there a week and try a different place each night and probably not be disappointed. As an aside there is not much in the way of classic Nepli cuisine. You can get something called Dhal Bhat almost everywhere which is a big plate with a massive serving of rice, some dhal (mushy chick-peas and pulses), and a vegetable curry. The beauty of this system is that you get unlimited refill and the hosts will normally hover around you brandishing more of each foodstuff and you eat your fill. It is excellent food for trekkers but in my opinion it gets very boring after a while and as the veg curry is normaly potato you get perhaps more carbohydrates and starch than you need. This actually leads to high levels of diabetes in later life, apparently.
I met up with my travelling companion Matt here a few days after arriving and we both agreed that the lake looked tempting. We could hire a paddle boat and take a trip out into the lake. Swimming is also allowed and water is clean and not too cold.
We managed to get a boat and set off, though the sun was deceptively strong. I managed to get horribly sunburned which put me in a foul mood for a few more days though with sufficient alcohol I was able to get through it. The lake was lovely though. It is a big 'L' shape and the surface was as smooth as glass. It is also much cooler on the lake than on land so doing this on a hot day was a good idea. We didn't explore to much of the shore, though I landed at one point to go for a wee, and getting back onto the boat noticed that I had managed to pick up a leech on my foot!
Leeches are disgusting slug-like parasites that sit in wet lands and wait for a warm-blooded mammal to latch themselves onto. A little like estate agents. When they are empty of blood they look like small worms, but once they have attached they start to suck your blood and become engorged. They then drop off and give birth to lots of baby leeches. The leech that took a shine to me was nothing spectacular unfortunately, being only about an inch long. It had been attached or about 20 mins when I poured salt onto it to make it fall off (you should never pull them off you as they leave nasty things in the wound). And that's my leech story. They don't even hurt.
Pokhara also has something else there which I found interesting. Ever since the start of the 19th Century, Britain has sourced thousands of Nepali mountain men as soldiers for the British Army called Gurkhas (named after the town of Gorkha where they started this process). Every year representatives of the British Crown visit the hills around Nepal and about 20,000 mountain men and boys, mainly boys, walk many miles across moutnains to volunteer. This number of volunteers is then pared down to about 250 who finally make the grade and get shipped to Shorncliffe in Kent to complete their training. Many families and tribes in the mountains have generations of men who have served in the British Army. The main depot for new Gurkhas in Nepal is in Pokhara though I did not see it as it's quite a way out and I was being lazy.
So the pace in Pokhara for me remained sedate and I got myself rested and well-fed once again. From here Matt and I decided to book a rafting trip. This was to last for 10 days and take in most of the River Karnali which is quite isolated in the Western half of the country. The rapids were supposed to be good and there was always the threat of meeting the Maoist Nepali Freedom-fighters as this was one of their haunts.
So we went.
I had met up with someone on the trip through Tibet who was doing volunteer work in the town and had heard much about it so my expectations were high. The main town itself is a busy Nepali town with the usual shops and Internet Cafes, though if you go a few kilometres down the road towards the big lake you get to Lakeside; a very peaceful and almost rural part of the outskirts. It is here where I stayed for a week.
The main change for me was that I was actually able to sleep at night without traffic noise or the crap band in the adjoining hotel making a racket. In Lakeside all you could hear at night were the creepy-crawlies and cicadas making their noises. If you looked outside towards the lake at dusk you could see the fireflies dancing around - this was my first time seeing a real firefly and I got quite excited. Fireflies look great at night, though if you reach out to touch the tiny floating fairy light you realise that the bug is about the size of a Volkswagen and has fangs, at least that what I thought I saw. It was one one of these cool evenings that I proclaimed Pokhara to be a Paradise - even the toilets are western-style.
The main drag along Lakeside is full of good quality restaurants serving nice approximations of western food, mainly Italian and Israeli funnily enough, with cold beer and cheerful staff. You can easily stay there a week and try a different place each night and probably not be disappointed. As an aside there is not much in the way of classic Nepli cuisine. You can get something called Dhal Bhat almost everywhere which is a big plate with a massive serving of rice, some dhal (mushy chick-peas and pulses), and a vegetable curry. The beauty of this system is that you get unlimited refill and the hosts will normally hover around you brandishing more of each foodstuff and you eat your fill. It is excellent food for trekkers but in my opinion it gets very boring after a while and as the veg curry is normaly potato you get perhaps more carbohydrates and starch than you need. This actually leads to high levels of diabetes in later life, apparently.
I met up with my travelling companion Matt here a few days after arriving and we both agreed that the lake looked tempting. We could hire a paddle boat and take a trip out into the lake. Swimming is also allowed and water is clean and not too cold.
We managed to get a boat and set off, though the sun was deceptively strong. I managed to get horribly sunburned which put me in a foul mood for a few more days though with sufficient alcohol I was able to get through it. The lake was lovely though. It is a big 'L' shape and the surface was as smooth as glass. It is also much cooler on the lake than on land so doing this on a hot day was a good idea. We didn't explore to much of the shore, though I landed at one point to go for a wee, and getting back onto the boat noticed that I had managed to pick up a leech on my foot!
Leeches are disgusting slug-like parasites that sit in wet lands and wait for a warm-blooded mammal to latch themselves onto. A little like estate agents. When they are empty of blood they look like small worms, but once they have attached they start to suck your blood and become engorged. They then drop off and give birth to lots of baby leeches. The leech that took a shine to me was nothing spectacular unfortunately, being only about an inch long. It had been attached or about 20 mins when I poured salt onto it to make it fall off (you should never pull them off you as they leave nasty things in the wound). And that's my leech story. They don't even hurt.
Pokhara also has something else there which I found interesting. Ever since the start of the 19th Century, Britain has sourced thousands of Nepali mountain men as soldiers for the British Army called Gurkhas (named after the town of Gorkha where they started this process). Every year representatives of the British Crown visit the hills around Nepal and about 20,000 mountain men and boys, mainly boys, walk many miles across moutnains to volunteer. This number of volunteers is then pared down to about 250 who finally make the grade and get shipped to Shorncliffe in Kent to complete their training. Many families and tribes in the mountains have generations of men who have served in the British Army. The main depot for new Gurkhas in Nepal is in Pokhara though I did not see it as it's quite a way out and I was being lazy.
So the pace in Pokhara for me remained sedate and I got myself rested and well-fed once again. From here Matt and I decided to book a rafting trip. This was to last for 10 days and take in most of the River Karnali which is quite isolated in the Western half of the country. The rapids were supposed to be good and there was always the threat of meeting the Maoist Nepali Freedom-fighters as this was one of their haunts.
So we went.