Pokhara

We have swapped the necessity of climbing into a thick sleeping bag fully clothed in a room in which ice forms on the inside of the windows for the joy of slipping between the sheets naked whilst the bedroom is cooled by an air conditioner. Frozen squatter toilets that have my thighs quivering have been replaced by sit-down western affairs on which my mind can be parked in neutral. Hiking boots have given way to flip flops. But the cool, crisp, clear mountain air is now hot, humid and hazed by a mixture of summer heat and pollution.

We’ve come to Pokara for a rest after our exertions around the Annapurna massif and it feels sub-tropical; somewhere that is in complete contrast to Kathmandu or the Himalayas; somewhere that the visitor would be forgiven for mistakenly believing to be in an another country altogether.

It’s a very pleasant setting: on the shores of Lake Phewa, immediately surrounded by green hills that are either populated by forest or regimentally stepped for farming. In the far distance, the great white peaks of the earth suddenly appear in the sky as if unconnected with the town and seem more like pictures that have been nailed to the sky. The whole vista can be enjoyed in the company of a cold beer, lounging in an enveloping chair, dressed in shorts, T shirt and dark glasses idling way the time in perfect sloth and indolence.

Most of the numerous lakeside hostelries do their best to encourage idleness by pushing cocktails from a comprehensive menu that appears to offer just about every conceivable combination of alcohol imaginable. However, imbibing in these intoxicating concoctions is very much a case of ‘caveat emptor’ as the ingredients of well known cocktails seem to have been lost in translation. Thus, my Singapore Sling was a curious mixture of sherry and soda that I don’t feel able to recommend to the thirsty traveller but which was marginally preferable to Debbie’s Mojito that, as far as we can detect, involved Tequila, Baileys and tonic. Even something as simple as a gin and tonic was beyond the skills of the Pokaran barmen and ordering a bottled beer was the only way of ensuring a drink that didn’t assault our sensory receptacles in an unexpected manner.

However, other than drinks, the town caters extremely well. The main Lakeside drag is stuffed with restaurants, snack bars, ice cream parlours, juice bars and bakeries that cater for an eclectic mixture of religions, nationalities and fussy eaters (i.e. vegetarians). They are all pretty good other than the bakeries who tend to produce a range of dry sawdust or, for the unwise, an unpleasant watery version of a chocolate cake (that may well achieve a hitherto unheard of calorie count of zero). But the coffee is fine and that just about makes up for their deficiencies elsewhere.

If the idle traveller awakes from slothfulness, Pokara is actually an adrenaline junkie’s heaven. There’s white water rafting, para gliding, microlight flying, horse riding, bicycling, golf, fishing, boating or trekking. And when we’ve finished showing off, there are massages and manipulations available to reduce any swelling of ego. Debbie complained that the one activity missing was that there didn’t appear to be anywhere that she could go after dinner for a good dance. I confess that I had spotted a couple of ‘dance bars’ but I suspected that they weren’t the sort of establishment a respectable gentleman entered especially with his wife. Purely in the interests of research, I offered to escort Debbie later in the evening but, oddly, she didn’t seem keen. Neither was I allowed out on my own.

Abundance in everything seems to be Pokara and that also applies to power cuts. Our hotel had two every day and they lasted for four or five hours each time. It became essential to ask when they were due so that it was possible to have a shower, use the internet or plan meals around them.

One way in which Nepal has joined the modern world is that these power cuts are not, in fact, power cuts at all but are known as ‘Load Shedding’. I suspect that there is some chap who travels the world and makes a fortune from reinventing names for events that have attracted negative connotations. We now have ‘quantitative easing’ instead of ‘printing money’ or government ‘investing’ instead of ‘spending’ in an oxymoron of the English language. I don’t understand why the media go along with it and become compliant in the spread of candyfloss politics. It won’t be long before every negative action has been given a positive word to make us half-witted voters feel less threatened by reality.

Pokara is linked to Britain in another way. It must be the furthest outpost of recruitment to the British Army. High up in ‘Old Pokara’ is the Gurkha recruitment office where hundreds of locals turn up to try to pass the selection tests to become soldiers loyal to the Queen. With the cutbacks (I mean spending liabilities) it has become more difficult to be accepted into the Gurkhas because they are not recruiting in as great numbers as before but that doesn’t reduce the enthusiasm of the Nepalese to try to join the British Army. In a country where the average daily wage is less than GBP 1 per day, a Gurkha recruit is paid GBP 1,000 per month, with a 16 year contract, a pension for life and the right to become a British citizen and live in the UK upon retirement. The Nepalese government have said that it isn’t acceptable for their citizens to join a foreign army and it must stop. However, such words are, shall we say, ‘aspirational’ when the British are contributing 8% of Nepal’s GDP.

We visited the Gurkha museum. We hired a couple of pushbikes that were made for those who are vertically challenged (i.e. Nepalese), scabbed a map from our hotel (a triumph in itself) and set off along roads that, I suspect, were never smooth, not even the day they were finished. I hadn’t realised that it was uphill the whole way and we arrived sweaty and uncomfortable in front of a Staff Sergeant.
“You’ll never get into the Gurkhas will you, Sir!”
“I certainly hope not”, I replied. How could I possibly keep a wife, five children, two dogs and a horse on a miserable GBP 1,000 per month?

Unfortunately, the museum wasn’t the best curated I have ever visited. It was rather dark and dingy. It didn’t help that our visit coincided with a period of load shedding or that the light went almost completely as a great black clouds, pregnant with rain, gathered overhead. So we reluctantly climbed into the saddle and free wheeled the 5 miles or so back into town where we were forced to take coffee and cake at a ‘German’ Bakery whilst the storm cloud slipped past.

The next morning, we took a car to travel to a high vantage point called Sarangkot where, we were told, we could get a fine view of the Annapurna’s and the iconic mountain Machhapuchhare, the ‘fishtail’ mountain, on which it is forbidden to climb. It took forever to get there as our driver seemed to be spooked by every little bump or dip in the road, slowing the car to a halt before gently easing over the potential heffalump trap. This caused a great queue of vehicles behind us, all blaring horns, shaking fists and shouts. However, our driver remained unmoved, easing forwards only when he felt absolutely ready and totally confident that the car wouldn’t suffer an irreparable heart attack. After 45 minutes of this stress, the driver pulled on the handbrake and announced “We have arrived.”
“No, we haven’t,” we sang indignantly, “we can see the top and it’s up there!” We could see the Sarangkot summit some way ahead and above us.
“Too dangerous for car to go further.” He replied, “You walk from here. It is 40 minutes.”

It was absolutely no use arguing politely or getting irritated, or jumping up and down waving arms and legs in the air; the driver would not budge. So, we had to walk and we didn’t arrive at the top in the best of moods having taken an hour and a half to get there from our hotel. Our disposition wasn’t helped by cloud which had now augmented to such an extent that the magnificent peaks were masked behind a blanket of shapeless white blanket. It was as if someone had put a sixpence into viewing binoculars and the time had expired. There was to be no further revelations until tomorrow morning at the earliest. “Thank you for coming. You all have a good day now”. Was all that was missing.

So we were forced to turn our attention to the para gliders who were jumping off the little mountain and soaring on the strong thermal updrafts that were generated by the strength of the morning sun. It looked a wonderful experience; hanging in the air, pretending to be a bird and having a bird’s eye view of the countryside all around the area for as far as the hazy pollution would allow. I was surprisingly keen to give it a go but lack of time combined with a shy wallet and an overwhelming desire to remain injury free until after our Everest trek ensured that I never got nearer the gliding shop doorways than the pavement (from where I would gaze longingly at the videos). I have to admit a slight concern about the actual return to earth when the mass of weight under the parachute would be akin to a jumbo jet landing totally out of control. I didn’t want to be responsible for a sizeable crater in the centre of Pokara International Airport’s sole runway, closing the facility to all flights for several weeks.

So, instead of flying fun we went off to visit the International Mountain Museum which is close enough to the airport to have suffered the aftershock of my return to earth. It is devoted to the mountains of Nepal and those who have, or have attempted, to climb them. Some of the kit used in the original ascents is on display and it makes us wonder just how tough those pioneers must have been not just because of the (compared to today) inadequate clothing but also the deprivations that they had to endure and the unknown dangers that they faced daily in order to attain their goal ahead of anyone else. We enjoyed it.

We finally moved on to the World Peace Pagoda, a giant white ball perched high above Phewa Lake in order to see if The Bull could achieve World Peace. The road disintegrated into a dusty, rough cart track that made us wonder why our space cadet of a driver was attempting to force his car over terrain that a human wouldn’t enjoy walking when he refused to attempt a far better track on Sarangkot. It took forever. We were even overtaken by someone on a push bike. We arrived near the top in a mind to cast world peace to the winds and start by according our driver a slow and painful death by boredom. We were somewhat surprised to find that this world peace pagoda was number 77 out of 100 built by Buddhist monks from Japan in an attempt to spread their ethos far and wide. They have to have some credit for their endeavours and jolly good luck to them but, I fear, they are preaching to the converted. It’s the despots, the dictators and governments who should have one of these built in their living rooms.

Returning to our digs, we slowly repacked our kit to move on to Kathmandu and prepare for our assault on Everest. We had arrived in Pokara tired after a hard slog around the Annapurnas and we needed some downtime, chance to recharge the batteries and relax. Over the eleven days on the trail Debbie had lost three kilos and I had lost five. Examining myself in the mirror, I couldn’t notice much of a difference which means that either the hotel scales are flatteringly inaccurate or I was sufficiently overweight before starting that a mere five kilos couldn’t be noticed. But when I thought about it everything became clear: the weight had come out of my bottom.

Pokhara
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