Sisters Astray

With 12 days of trekking under our belts, Kelly and I were looking forward to returning to Pokhara for some good ol’ r&r.  Situated below the Annapurna mountain range on the tranquil waters of Lake Phewa Tal, Pokhara is a chilled out town with cute restaurants, bars, and shops.  We spent four days wandering the streets, eating amazing pizza, Indian food, and steak (we were sooooo sick of eating dahl baht everyday), napping, reading, and doing not much else.  

Also, we were fortunate enough to meet up with Doug again!  He had just finished the Everest Base Camp trek and made the trip to Pokhara to relax and do some paragliding.  One afternoon the three of us took a crazy taxi ride up to the World Peace Pagoda to get an overall view of Pokhara and snap some photos.  Unfortunately, the skies had begun to get a little hazy, so the view wasn’t as nice as we had hoped.

At the World Peace Pagoda

After several days of being lazy, Kelly and I signed up for a two-day white-water rafting trip down the x river.  We did an easy section of the river, which consisted of mostly Class II and a couple of Class III rapids…our first day we basically floated along the river taking in the spectacular views around us.  Camp was set up on a small beach with another group of paddlers taking a kayak course and our guides prepared a fantastic dinner for us before having a couple of beers and calling it a night.

The second day of rafting was a bit more exciting.  We got to hit up a few Class III rapids and assisted in the ‘rescue efforts’ of the kayakers that were tumped over during the more difficult runs.  At first Kelly and I were kicking ourselves for not doing a kayaking course instead, but after watching the kayakers eat it on those rapids, we were glad we stuck to the rafting.

At the take-out point, the plan was for the majority of the group to catch a public bus back to Kathmandu.  The guides hailed a bus, but the only room available was on the roof with the luggage.  In Nepal, it is totally acceptable to ride on the roof of buses, cars, trains, whatever.  Everyone in our group was ok with this, but I was not having it.  I insisted that Kelly and I would wait for another bus.  Eager to be rid of us and head back to Pokhara, the guides convinced a couple of ladies at the front of the bus to stand up so Kelly and I would have a seat. 

That’s the other thing about Nepal buses…they pack in as many people (and animals) as possible so people are sitting on top of eachother, standing in the aisles, etc.  Kelly and I sat at the front of the bus, facing the opposite direction which meant we had about 30 Nepali people staring at us for the entire seven hour journey…pretty entertaining for us and them.  It was not a comfortable ride and we even thought it would have been nicer to ride on the roof (and actually probably safer…at least we could jump off if the bus started to take a tumble over a cliff).  Unfortunately, our friends up top assured us that it wasn’t much better up there either.

Happy to be alive, yet exhausted when we finally got back to Kathmandu, we checked into our guesthouse and had an early night.