Category: Pokhara

My last full day in Pokhara saw the thick haze return to obstruct most of the views of the Himalayas, so I thought I should go check out the International Mountain Museum. Getting there became the usual drama in places like this. All you want is a simple taxi ride to the museum and everyone’s eyes light up like it’s a potential sales opportunity for a day-long chauffeur job. It makes you think twice before going anywhere that requires a cab!

None of the cab drivers around here want to use their meters, so you need to negotiate a price before you get in. Then on the way there they try to entice you into seeing all the sights around town you haven’t been to yet. Then they insist on a round trip fare and say they will wait for you while you see the museum. “Half hour?” they ask. “Um, actually, how about 2 hours. I like to take my time.” I read the museum was quite large. They look at you like your crazy and I’m sure the financial appeal of the deal suddenly doesn’t sound so good. I send him off telling him to come back in 2 hours and not wait so he has the opportunity to earn from others, but I’m not sure he ever left.

Anyway, the museum was quite interesting and it actually did take me a few hours to get through it. There was information on each of the world’s highest 20 peaks (even more interesting after hiking past some of them) and who were the first to climb them. There was information on all the local plants and animals of Nepal, as well as Yeti(!) There was gear donated to the museum that had been used to get to some of the summits. It was interesting to see how rudimentary some of it was by today’s standards. Most of the gear seemed to be donated by Asian expeditions and not from the West. There were also displays on each of the native groups prominent in different regions of the country, like the Sherpas of the Everest area.

It seemed as though the 1950’s were the big years to conquer all the summits. There is still one left in Nepal that has never been successfully climbed, but the Nepalese government stopped letting people try back in 1963. It’s called Fishtail and it is very steep and difficult to ascend.

One of the most interesting displays was of all the garbage they have cleaned up from Mount Everest. One climber who eventually made it to the top was so dismayed by all the things left by previous climbers that he organised a regular cleaning campaign to collect the waste and fly it out. Among the debris were pieces of broken ladders (used to get across crevices in the ice), big piles of cooking stove gas canisters (some flattened by ice pressure over time), old ripped up tent fragments, and big piles of oxygen tanks – some dating back to the 1960’s.

With just a few days left of my stay in Pokhara, I’ve took a day of rest to recuperate from endless Annapurna stair climbs and descents and lined up a bit of mountain biking for this morning in the nearby hills. Like all my other pursuits here, I’ve found myself with a personal guide to show me around. Or at least I did initially. An Australian guy from Victoria came and joined us at the last minute. It certainly seems a bit slow here this time of year, but that is good for me. Nepal seemed pretty busy with Chinese tourists when I first arrived, but that was due to the Chinese New Year holiday period in China – which is over now.

Hills? More like mountains! The mountain bike circuit, which was supposed to be their least hilly, kicked off with. 500 meter climb up to the top of a ridge overlooking the city of Pokhara and its neighboring lake. Too bad the place has become so hazy again – the views would have been quite spectacular otherwise. From the top it ran along a gentle roller-coaster ridge hugging track for a while before a quick descent down to a huge plateau of rice paddies next to the lake. From there the ride was fairly flat all the way back into town. About 700 meters of climbing in all and 30kms in length. Our guide offered to take us up the another mountain on the other side of the lake, but we both politely declined.

I don’t know what it is, but every time I have ever rented a bike overseas, I have always had a problem with the seat post continually sliding down until the bike becomes too hard to peddle and I have to stop and raise it again. This has happened to me in Fiji, Egypt, and now Nepal. Otherwise, it was a much nicer bike that I have been able to rent in the past.

The bike tour operator was actually a front for a local mountain bike club. Good mountain bikes are prohibitively expensive for many Nepalese, so the club would conduct tours for tourists and get the tourists to pay fees that were high enough to finance good bikes for the club members who would ride them the rest of the time.

On my last morning near Chitwan National Park, my hotel arranged for me to get up extra early for an early morning cruise in a dugout canoe along a crocodile infested river. How charming! Actually, it was incredibly beautiful and we did pass about 5-6 crocodiles along the way, lurking just below the water or sunning themselves along the banks. Yes they we dangerous, but no, no tourists have ever been bitten by them. We also saw quite a few deer down along the river for an early morning drink. It wasn’t hard work. We just had to sit there while a man with a pole, Venice style, guiding our boat down the properly flowing river channels. Afterwards we ended up at an elephant breeding center, much like a crocodile breeding center we visited a day earlier as part of our jeep safari.

I enjoyed my stay neat Chitwan, and I appreciated the red carpet treatment I received from all the staff at my desperate hotel, but I was looking forward to getting away from all the attention. I was also getting sick of being overstuffed with food three times a day that you felt must be consumed so as not to insult your hosts. They seemed to be serving me the same thing every day in slightly different variations. I had chicken for every meal (except breakfast) and suspect they bought one for me and carved a little bit off for every meal to mix in with the same ingredients in different ways. The meals also seemed to get a little more westernized as we went when chips were thrown in, which was not their forte and not what I wanted.

I also grew a bit wary of being attacked my mosquitoes in the middle of the night. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out they they were getting in my room, but they were constantly buzzing my ears to keep me away. It is malaria country, I was told back in Perth by my travel doctor, so I have been taking my expensive medication – but there are also other nasty illnesses that come from mosquitoes that I would rather not have anything to do with. I put up a mosquito net one night, but it wasn’t quite set up correctly without a hook in the ceiling and a bed that was too big for it, so I couldn’t be bothered messing around with it the second night.

Speaking of food, there is one particular Nepali delicacy that I have grown fond: Masala Tea. It is a blend of tea, cinnamon, and a few other spices (coriander?) blended with milk and sugar. I’ll have to figure out how they make it.

After my crocodile canoeing, my driver dutifully showed up to take me on another wild drive to my next destination. This time to the central Nepali city of Pokhara. Pokhara is a backpackers haven and gateway to countless outdoor adventures in the middle of the country – including my trek along part of the Annapurna Circuit. It was a crazy drive that my driver seemed a bit more aggressive with than the drive he did for me a few days ago. It was probably my fault for pushing back our departure time so I could go canoeing in the morning. I think it messed up his plans to get back to Kathmandu before dark.

Fortunately, when I arrived safe and sound in Pokhara at the sister guesthouse of my Kathmandu stay, I was giving their very best room up on the top floor with spectacular views out over the city and lake district with huge mountains looming up in the background. It is probably the highest hotel in town, so it looks down on everything else. Hopefully they will have a similar room waiting for me when I get back from my hike!