Things to do in Pokhara

Pokhara is a smaller city outside the capital with a beautiful mountain view and a lot less traffic than Kathmandu :)

Here are some highlights of the whirlwind sightseeing after seeing sunrise that morning.

Bindibhasini temple – one of the most famous temples in Pokhara

Shanti Stupa - A Buddhist shrine on top of a hill.

   

Or I can fly there...

The walk to Shanti Stupa

Gupteshwar Mahadev – Shiva Mundir inside a cave! Unfortunately no cameras allowed inside.

produce straight from the farm - yum!

Water! (Tal means lake)

Devi’s Falls

                  

Rainbow :)

Fewatal mundir by boat

    

             

Begnastal

 

the fate of those fish later

Fishing!

After a long day of sightseeing, we rest up for the drive home Tuesday morning.

True Beauty

Machapuchare

Some of these posts are going to be mostly just writing, some mostly pictures. This is the latter. The real thing is thousands of times more beautiful than pictures and cannot be described by words.

Monday morning, we woke up at 4am and rushed to Sarankot to get a good view of sunrise in the Annapurna range of the Himalayas.

everyone anxiously waiting for sunrise

This is just something everyone should to do at least once in their life. 

You really have not seen beauty until you’ve experienced this.

First Light

 

I'm living in a beautiful painting.

It's over yonder

Life as a Tharu

Woke up at 5am the next morning and headed into a nearby Tharu village via ox cart. It was like stepping into a museum or a reenactment fair, thinking how people lived like this back in the old days ...except people still live like this today. It’s not pretend, it’s not historical entertainment; for them, it’s real life.

Tharu Village

   

           Kitchen

House

Living Area

 

an old woman asked us

to take a pic of her

Sleeping Area

         

 

After breakfast we hop back in the van, heading to Pokhara.

a night in the jungle

6hrs later, we reach Chitwan, the most humid place on the planet as far as I’m concerned.

 

The road to the hotel is a never ending dirt path with rice fields on either side. The trees start to get denser and the straight road becomes winding as we get closer.

 After checking out the rooms and compound, we have lunch and discuss our plans.

First up, hop on some elephants and scope out the national park for tigers

Now this is my first time riding an elephant. The last time I had the chance, I was 4 and it was about 10x my size, I was terrified. So now getting on the elephant (who wouldn’t stop moving around) I was just a little bit anxious. Once we got going, I felt a little relieved …until I saw that up ahead we had to cross a river. I felt like I was playing real life Oregon-Trail except I had no wagon to caulk.

       

Once we crossed the river, it turned out to be a blast.

We spotted the normal sights: deer, wild pig, Kingfisher and other birds. Our guide pointed to something across the stream, I couldn’t quite see what it was until we got closer—a mother rhino with her baby! When we got close, they moved away into the brush and the mother flashed a warning. We went across the stream to get a better look and all of a sudden we hear the rhino charge, thankfully not at us.

 

After navigating through the brush on the lookout for more wildlife, we cross the stream and make our way back through the jungle… which is when the guide casually tells us that a elephant recently got stuck in that stream and also that our seats were not well tied which is why the guide kept shifting to maintain balance …exactly what you want to hear when you’re about to cross a river on an elephant. Crossing that river a second time seemed ages longer than the first but we made it back for sunset so the magnificent view made it worth it.

   

Exhausted, we retired to our rooms to shower and freshen up for dinner.

Exhaustion swept away my prior worries that a tiger or rhino might somehow eat me in my sleep. It did not, unfortunately, wipe away the awful sticky feeling of humidity.

hit the road

Our mode of transportation
...just kidding

3:45am completely ignore alarm, dark out

4:00am hit snooze, still dark out

4:15am still dark out but give up and get up, exercise & shower

5:15am tea time

5:30am finish getting ready and last minute packing

6:15am eat some more and pack car

7:00am on the dot, hit the road.

Luckily we had a roomy van :)

By 9:00am

we are out of the valley and zipping in and out of mountains. 

Pictures don’t do it justice.

It literally took my breath away - partly because it was absolutely stunning, partly because I have never seen anything like it, and partly because with any slight wrong move we’d fall off the side of a mountain.

There are people on that footbridge,
how's that for a measurement scale?

finally out of the city :)