10-28-2017 – We woke up early today to prepare for the 5 hour drive to Pokhara. We were going to be picked up by Jitendra and our trekking guide Rikzen at 0700. It is not that far to Pokhara, but the two lane road is not great so it is slow going.
The driving style here is crazy. They drive on the left, or rather are “supposed” to drive on the left. The center line is a mere suggestion of where you should be driving, but apparently, not many Nepali drivers are open to suggestions. When a car is driving slower than you, you simply pass…but it’s not like passing at home. Drivers do not care if another car is coming from the opposite direction. They speed around the car in front and the oncoming car, motorcycle, or commercial truck simply slows a bit. Often times there is no hurry to return to the proper side of the road and it really is like a game to see how close they can get to each other without colliding. Passes within a foot or two of each other’s front bumpers is common place and actually entertaining to watch if you are an adrenaline junkie. All the drivers really are very patient and there is a lot of horn honking to let drivers know you are passing but absolutely no road rage. While all seems crazy at first, it really does works out and we saw no accidents yet in any of our travels. Oh, except there was a bus that flew off the road into the river on our road to Pokhara the morning of our trip but, that was at 5:30 am so it may have been the driver falling asleep. There was a big article in the paper, but unfortunately we do not read Nepalese.
It was a pretty drive along the Marsyangdi and Trishuli Rivers past stunning traditional villages, terraced fields and we had some fantastic picturesque views of the Himalayan Range. Wayne found out they have Rainbow Trout in the rivers and wanted to stop to fly fish. Typical. We had lunch at the junction of these two rivers and watched a few construction workers building a new bridge. The men worked at least 500 feet above the river gorge walking along foot wide beams in flip flops and swinging new pieces made of steel beams into place with a cable crane without hesitation. Dangerous work. We had Dhal Bat for lunch and Wayne learned the traditional Nepali way of eating with your hands, so when in Rome, he decided to eat with his hands like our new Nepali friends. I chose to use a fork.
We arrived at Pokhara and Rikzin took us to a few places so we could shop and get a couple of things that we wanted for our trek and to take home. We went to a Tibetan Refugee Camp where highly skilled Tibetan artisans have come to live after fleeing the Chinese crack down on Tibet. We bought 3 Tibetan rugs made from the special wool of Tibetan sheep only found at the high altitudes on the Tibetan side of the Himalayas. The wool is very soft compared to normal lambs wool with a very high lanolin content to repel dirt. The wool is hand spun, dyed on the premise which we were able to watch before our purchase. We also watched women hand weave rugs in the traditional style on what looked like ancient wooden looms. Tedious work to be sure. Sharon also bought a couple of handcrafted items for a few lucky people!
Rikzin took us to our hotel where we checked in and started to prepare our bags for our trek. Only trekking gear was being carried up the mountain. We carefully considered every item because we knew either us or our porter was going to be having that on our backs for the next 7 days. Rikzin brought us a large waterproof bag and we packed that up and rested a bit before dinner. Pretty soon Rikzin came knocking on our hotel room door and told us that there was a mix up with the rooms and he wanted us to move to another hotel. We were fine where we were but he insisted that we should move. Come to find out he placed us in the room where he was supposed to stay with Jitendra. The hotel that we switched to was absolutely beautiful and we were booked into the top floor with an amazing view of Pokhara, Lake Phewa and of course, the Himalayas. It was dark so we could not see if the mountains were visible, but we were hoping that the morning would bring amazing views.