The Road to Pokhara

Before I forget, I wanted to mention that Nepal is 1 hour and 15 minutes off of Southeast Asia time.... I think the extra 15 minutes was Nepal's attempt to exert a little independence from its huge neighbor to the south that it relies on for most of its imports - India. Whatever the reason, it's highly confusing for me.

In coming to Nepal, we had both decided not to do a trek due to time constraints and because of the monsoons. Now that we're here, it was definitely the right decision, though it means we won't get up into the high elevations of the Himalayas on this trip. The evening monsoons are torrential downpours, which turn the roads into rivers. Not the sort of thing I'd like to be hiking or spending the night in a tent in.... Regardless, many people who trek in Nepal (including possibly me in the future) do so from Pokara, which is a few hours to the west of Kathmandu. There are some interesting day hikes possible from here, so we decided to make it our next stop.
The road to Pokhara was a spectacular drive along a massive glacial river in the Himalyan foothills. It got progressively hotter as we headed toward Pokhara, and was admittedly not the most comfortable ride. I'm going to try to sit on the roof of the next bus we are on. One extremely pleasant surprise was the clearing of the sky and the appearance of several of the Himalayan peaks -- Ganesh Himal, Himalchuti, and the Annapurna massif in particular. Each of these peaks are between 7000 and 8000 meters tall.... holy crap. This is the one thing I was hoping for while in Nepal. I knew we weren't going to be trekking, but I at least wanted to feel like we were in the vicinity of these mighty mountains; hard to do in sweltering tropical heat with the peaks hidden behind clouds. What a spectacular sight!

After 7 hours of driving and two 30-minute food stops, we finally made it the 140 miles from Kathmandu to Pokhara. It takes a while to get anywhere here, even on the busiest highway in the country. It's a two lane road that is frequently cut down to one-lane since trucks and buses just park in the middle of the road instead of pulling off to the side. Though there isn't often a place to pull off, we noticed the drivers seemed to pick the worst places to do so; in the middle of a bridge or at a blind curve are two frequent places.

Something we found out is that the price of gas and oil here in Nepal has doubled in the last two months, putting the price up around US$6.00/gallon. No wonder transport was costing more than was mentioned in the guidebook. India has a stranglehold on gas imports, so Nepal is at their mercy for this commodity.

We arrived in lakeside Pokhara without any fuss and were greeted by an aggressive and in-your-face crowd of "touts" trying to get you to go to a certain hotel (where they would receive a commission and you get a higher price). This is another fact of travel here in Nepal and India we'll have to deal with. This obviously happens elsewhere too, but I think it's going to be particularly ruthless here.

We're going to spend the next couple days hiking and relaxing in the hills around Pokhara. I'll let you know how that was in my next post!

-matt!