Well, hello there Americanos, Hillary here to bring you an update from the lovely lakeside village of Pokhara. But to catch you up, I'm going to back up for a minute and re-cap Kathmandu for you. As Jordan has already described in the last post, Nepal's capital city smacked us in the face with smog, hellish traffic, diesel fumes, tons of people everywhere, and mangy dogs at every corner. I must say my first half day in Kathmandu as a bleary-eyed, jet-lagged hot mess was not a great experience. Turns out, its not my favorite thing to get hip-checked by a Nepali taxi's side-view mirror, whilst trying to avoid stepping in cow shit and politely declining a passer-by's offer to "smoke hash?". But now after about a week of acclimating and desensitizing myself to the organized chaos, I'm really starting to enjoy the peculiarity of my new life. Its helps that Pokhara so much smaller,quieter, cleaner.
Jordan walking the streets of Kathmandu
Anyways, Kathmandu was delightful in its own way. Our 2nd day there (only full day mind you), we met up with our new friend Matt, who we met on the plane ride from Kunming, to do a walking tour of several temples or stupas ending up in Durbar Square. It was quite the experience, getting out of Thamel, the tourist district, into neighborhoods where NOTHING is written in English, and you just kind of hope you're going in the right direction. Long story short (and I know I'm not doing them justice) saw some really cool temples of both Hindu and Buddhist origin,but mostly the cool part was seeing daily life so dramatically different than my own (or at least how it used to be).
Later that evening, the three of us piled into a taxi and went up to Swayambhunath Stupa, a temple on a hill overlooking the city. Holy site for both the Hindus and Buddhists, also home to an absurd amount of monkeys. The view was beautiful, but also kind of sad. Such beautiful land and topography but sort of covered up by people living in squalor.
The next day we headed to Pokhara, where we've been ever since. We've shuffled around hotels a bit, settling now on the northern end of the lakeside area in a quiet, spacious room with a beautiful view. There are tons of Westerners here, and yet its been difficult to really "meet" people. I figured people would tend to say hello to a fellow non-Nepali at a restaurant, maybe pull up a chair and have a conversation, but it hasn't quite happened like that. My theory is that I (we) look too touristy still, too fresh off the boat, here for three weeks and then back to busy American lives. This morning I found myself, for a minute, wishing I had dreadlocks, a macrame tank top and some kind of god-awful tribal tramp stamp so the hippie yogis at the table next to me would think I'm cool enough to talk to. Jordan and I both sat there silent eating our breakfast, eavesdropping on their conversation, hoping for an 'in'. Then I snapped out of it and thought "hey what do I care if this tie-dye wearing douchebag with a man-purse talks to me or not"? Why should I change who I am touristy-clothes wearing, arm cast and all for somebody I don't even know? And then I felt a lot cooler because hey at least i don't have a dreadlock mullet (business in the front, dirty in the back), and at least i don't pretend to have a European accent when I'm from Southern California.
That being said, Pohkara otherwise has been absolutely delightful. The first day we were here, we rented a little boat and paddled around the lake. The best day so far was renting a motorcycle for the day and exploring the hills around the city. We started out by going up to the World Peace Pagoda, a beautiful temple on a hill overlooking Pokhara and the lake, with a great view of the Annapurnas peaking here and there behind the clouds. After that we took the bike up north of town, on a pot-holed, some-times paved, sometimes gravel, a lot of times dirt road, until it ran out at the river. It was truly a moment I'll never forget riding down a winding path, with vistas of terraced hills to my right, dzos (cows) mulling about in the river cooling off, and vibrantly dressed women hauling in loads of harvested grass (to be honest i don't know what it was, but it looked like long blades of grass) in handmade baskets strapped to their foreheads. I felt like i was in freakin national geographic.
Me, pulling the Asian tourist move, at Monkey temple
Oh I probably forgot to mention that our first night here, I rolled my ankle stepping off the curb. So I've been gimping around with an arm cast and an ace-wrapped swollen ankle. God, I'm such a clutz. Anyways, flimsy ankles be damned we are going to start trekking the Annapurna Circuit on Monday.
Sincerely, your very bug-bitten friend,
Hillary
PS more photos later when the internet isn't from 1999
Great post, Hill-dawg. We love you as you are . . . but dreads would be cool, too.
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