Day 20: Kathmandu

Today was a lazy, mostly uneventful day.  We didn’t have anywhere we were supposed to go, no destinations, projects, or necessary activities.  I’d build this extra day into our schedule to ensure that we were safely in Kathmandu, in case the bus broke down from Pokhara or some other disaster befell and delayed us: I didn’t want to miss our flight home!  Happily, our travels met no such calamity – except for a brief scare when we heard that all the taxi drivers were going on strike today, as well as a great many businesses in the area: after further inquiry, my informant, a smiling and chatty English-speaking Nepali, said the strike should only last today and we shouldn’t have any difficulties getting to the airport in the morning.

This spare day wasn’t as enjoyable as our rest day in Tatopani, because there was no comparing that lush, tropical vacation destination to the noisy, congested, smog saturated city of Kathmandu.  We decided to go for a walk to find breakfast and we found a quiet, plant decorated place called Revolution Café and enjoyed our last Set breakfast as we sat under their awning-covered patio/alleyway and watched trekkers and motorbikes navigate the narrow street.  Since we didn’t have anywhere to go after breakfast, we window shopped to waste time and wandered up and down every street in Thamel.  I decided I must own a pair of the flowing harlequin pants I saw on every third female trekker that passed us, so, with a mission now, we stopped to shop every single clothing vendor – there were dozens upon dozens of them.  Lunchtime arrived and we returned to our hotel to spend a lazy lunch on the roof balcony, eating fries, drinking hot cocoa, and watching the flow of pedestrians and bikes and carts on the street below us.  Our food was edible, though I believed we would get sick, because I was sure they were not properly boiling the water used in our drinks and to cook our meals.

These birds were everywhere and have a horrendously annoying caw.

Photo fail: my camera took a self-timed photo and started to fall off the table. Yes, totally eating fries with toothpicks.

The water tanks breed confidence, right?

After reading and napping in our room we hit the even more congested streets to shop and find dinner.  I eventually gave up my pants mission, finding nothing long enough to fit my body, so we navigated back through the twisting, branching streets to the popular Roadhouse Café to try their famous woodoven cooked pizza.  The place was packed full of people, but we managed to score a table on their back patio and within eyesight of the ovens.  It was an entertaining place to people watch and listen to all the different languages represented, but the service was lousy and the food, while tasty, was expensive.  We finished our meal, lingered, waited for our bill, asked for our bill, and waited some more.  Hoping to draw our not-that-busy waiter’s attention, we stacked our dishes like the leaning tower of Pisa: it did not have the desired effect.  Finally we stood up and pretended to leave, which immediately garnered his service.  We made our way back to our hotel just as darkness was falling over the still bustling city, climbed the three flights of poorly lit stairs to our room, and prepared for bed.  Earplugs were a must.

Day 19: Pokhara - Kathmandu

The alarm started beeping and we immediately packed and hit the road.  Most all the shops were closed and the streets nearly deserted at such an early hour, but the boys with huge platters of pastries balanced on their heads were out trying to sell breakfast to early risers like us.  We bought cinnamon rolls from one of them and I didn’t let myself think about the sanitation status of my roll.  Then, happily, we found an open coffee shop and ordered hot chocolate – I was briefly worried that the shop wouldn’t have to-go cups, but they must have been accustomed to trekkers needing a warm drink on the go as they walked to the bus stop, so I was pleased when the girl nodded at my paper cup request.  Breakfast in hand, we retraced our steps from yesterday’s reconnaissance walk and had an easy, flat walk along the road in the cool morning air.  As we grew closer to the bus stop, more and more trekkers could be seen, either walking like us, or bumping along in tiny taxis: it was as if we were bees returning to a hive or metal shards being drawn to a magnet.

Waiting for hot chocolate.

One final look at Annapurna South.

Goodbye

Some sort of blessing: the two women walk and pour stuff around a sacred tree

If we were newbie trekkers, the bus stop would have caused much trepidation and worry, because it appeared chaotic, unmarked, completely random, and devoid of any direction, however we were now seasoned Nepal travelers and were undaunted when we arrived at the enormous gravel parking lot.  Taxis dropped off their passengers and heimliched backpacks from their trunks in any open area of the dusty space, leaving the soon-to-be bus passengers blinking away the dust and gathering their bearings.  A couple of fruit and drink stands were clustered together in one corner of the lot and an army of buses was lined up, row behind row, across a wide expanse of gravel.  We sat and waited.  There was a calm hush and then, all at once, the place burst into activity, with bus managers and door boys ushering trekkers and tourists and locals toward the parked buses; we followed the flurry of activity, asking one bus manager and then another to point us toward our bus, which was identified by a name and number, but impossible for us to locate in the multitude of rows of vehicles.  Eventually, we found our bus, showed the door boy our tickets, and then stood by the vehicle waiting to climb aboard.  After the bus manager was satisfied he had collected all his passengers, he yelled for everyone to find their seats.  We, tired of standing in the already warm sun complied, only to discover our driver was missing.  Fuming, the manager stormed off the bus and a great deal of angry words could be heard above the din of rumbling bus engines, crying babies, talking passengers, and the crunch of gravel as the procession of buses began pulling out of the parking lot.  Our sheepish driver appeared, just in time for our bus’ turn to exit the lot – really this procession was beautifully choreographed, with each vehicle swinging wide to avoid collisions and sweeping across the lot with nary a snarl or traffic jam.

The buses are parked at least three rows deep.  Here you can see trekkers and taxis, as well as a fruit stand.

So we rode.  Our seats, it turned out, were excellent, as promised.  From time to time Sam and I would treat ourselves to a slice of cold pizza, while the passengers around us cast envious glances at our food selection and forethought.  The bus stopped only twice, for brief rest stops: the door boy would let everybody out of the bus and when it was time to leave, he would usher everybody back on the bus. There was a great crowd gathered in one of the towns for some sort of demonstration and protest, which slowed our progress as the bus cautiously plowed through the crowded street.

Waiting at a rest stop.

A protest of some sort.

Those flags...

I will explain here what a door boy is, since I mentioned this position yesterday as well.  Buses seem to have three people who operate them: the manager (leader), the driver (second in command), and the door boy (least).  The manager serves as the bank, the navigator, and makes most all decisions.  It isn’t difficult to figure out what the driver does.  The door boy is usually younger; he sits at the door and is in charge of opening and closing the door and helping passengers on and off the bus – he also serves as the gofer.  As we neared Kathmandu and the road began to twist and wind its way up the hillside, traffic snarled and periodically came to a standstill.  During one of these standstills, the driver ordered the door boy to get out and run up the road and see what was going on (or something to that effect, it was all said in Nepali).  So the door boy ran and came back and reported his findings.  At the next stop, a long one, the door boy got out again, as did a male passenger seated somewhere in the middle of the bus.  Many people got out of their vehicles, the wait was so long, and they were chatting with each other.  Traffic began to roll again, so the door boy hopped back in and we traveled up the road for at least ten minutes before someone from the middle or back of the bus said (all in Nepali, remember), “Hey, where’s so-and-so?”  A slight commotion rustled its way up through the bus as people started asking about the male passenger who got off the bus.  “Is he up front?”  We up front shook our heads no.  The manager now caught wind of the murmurs and, I kid you not, the following Nepali conversation was as understandable as if they were speaking English:

Manager: “What’s going on?”

Door Boy: “They are saying So-and-So isn’t on the bus.”

Manager: “What? Where is he?”

Door Boy: “So-and-So got off the bus when we stopped and I guess he didn’t get back on.  We left him.”

Manager: “Ugh, can you see him behind us?”

Door Boy, after smashing his head against the door’s window and looking behind us: “No, I don’t see him.”

Manager: “Oh well, it’s too late now: we aren’t stopping.”

Driver: “No freaking way are we stopping for that idiot.”

Sam and I looked at each other and burst into laughter.

Traffic, an ambulance, and um...our driver's head.

  

The bus completed it’s journey at a bus stop that was different from the one we had been at when we left Kathmandu, so Sam and I had zero clue where we were or in which direction was Thamel.  This fact caused me not the slightest trepidation.  I started walking down the sidewalk and stopped people whom I thought were likely to either speak English or be able to point me in the direction of Thamel.  I made a couple of attempts, asking “Thamel?” until one man pointed up the road and then curved his hand to the right.  Sam and I followed his directions, made a couple smart guesses, and knew we had arrived when we began to see colored prayer flags strung across narrow streets and cheap trekker supplies in shop windows.  I reflected back to that first day when we followed the white girl who was so relaxed and seemed to know where she was and what she was doing; I proudly realized I was that girl now.

Relaxing with my feet up, because I just completed an awesome trek.

Sam and I wandered the streets looking for a suitable hotel and asked around at a couple of places – I wanted something under $5.  We settled on one place, mostly because we were tired.  They had a restaurant up on the top floor and we ate dinner there: I had fries, which had become my main dish of choice.  Then we spent the rest of the evening reading and listening to the garish sounds of the busy city of Kathmandu.

Day 18: Pokhara

Gnats and mosquitoes chewed us mercilessly last night and I didn’t get much sleep.  No lurking cockroaches made themselves known, however, so that was a small blessing: the random on and off blinking of the bathroom light must have kept them at bay.  At 7:15am I couldn’t stand to be in the hard bed any longer, so I roused Sam from across the room and headed to the bathroom to change into the same outfit I was wearing yesterday: it is too hot here to wear my only other set of clothes – thank goodness my stuff is antimicrobial and doesn’t stink.  We set out for a breakfast of cinnamon rolls and hot cocoa, but couldn’t find a place that served both, so we bought the rolls from a little family bakery that was mostly dirt free, but had a heavy dusting of flour over everything and already felt like an oven at 7:30am; then we headed down the street to the pizza place and sat at an outside table for two and ordered hot cocoa.  It was weak tasting, but the presentation was artful and rivaled the fanciest specialty coffee shop back home.  We think there are only one or two bakeries in the area and all the other shops and street sellers buy their products and resell them.  I tried to not imagine how many hands touched those pastries before they were bought and consumed. 

Teeka Resort, I wouldn't recommend it. Maybe it's a bug resort.

The place where we slept last night was not acceptable for another night, so on our way back from breakfast we toured another hotel and booked a room with them; then we came back to our place to waste time, since it was only 8:00am.  We had tried to ask our hotel for directions to the bus park, so we could walk there and know where it is for tomorrow, but no one would tell us.  Another reason to change hotels - that, and the dead cockroach right outside our room door.  Shops were just opening, the entire town had a sleepy feel to it, as if nobody really had anywhere they needed to go, and a general indolence pervaded the neighborhood.  Sam read and I went up to the roof to take photos and write.  The weather was shaping up to be glorious.

 At 10:30am we were hungry again, so we wandered over to a nearby restaurant called “Chilly” and sat upstairs on the balcony under the shade of a sun-bleached umbrella.  I had fries and another variation of a milkshake: this one consisted of milk with chocolate syrup and ice cubes.  Discovering everyone’s idea of what a milkshake was had become a hobby of mine; it is always different, like the fries, or the macaroni and cheese fiasco, because the people making such food have never actually eaten the “real thing” and cook according to their best guess.  We talked about opening up a cooking school as we slowly ate our second breakfast and watched two cows saunter down the middle of the road.

Set breakfast titles!  Heavy Set, anyone?

After a short sightseeing walk at noon, we returned to our first hotel to pack and then, with an air of haughtiness, moved down the street to our new hotel.  On the second floor, we paused, not remembering which room number we were supposed to be in, so we just chose an empty room, an end room in keeping with our usual teahouse placement, and called it ours.  I took a nice, long, hot shower and then joined Sam on the balcony and watched people and cows passing on the street below us.

New hotel

Helping ourselves to a room.

Our room even had a tiny balcony in the back - super cute.

We decided we’d walk and find the place that sells and rents Royal Enfield motorcycles, so we strolled down the main street until we found the bike place, but were unimpressed with its display.  Right next door to this place was a popular restaurant overlooking the lake called the Busy Bee; I liked its atmosphere, it reminded me of an old-school lounge club that is “members only,” so we decided to eat lunch there.  I ordered fries and another shake, but they couldn’t make the shake because the electricity was out, so we had fries and cokes from glass bottles – the coke had a different taste than what I am used to and was more fizzy, but it was tasty and the first carbonated drink I’d had in three weeks.

These bikes were excessively loud and easy to distinguish from all the puttering scooters.

Once we had eaten and rested in the shade, we decided to explore a bit and see where the main road led, so we walked and walked until we grew dusty, weary, and hot.  By 3:00pm we were back at our hotel and eagerly talked to the man at the front desk about the bus.  He sold us tickets, saying it was a “very good and fast” bus and that he got us seats at the very front of the bus so we could see out the windows and not have people crushing us with their seat-backs.  He then told us how to get to the bus station: it turned out to be the exact path we had just walked, only further, so we were elated that we finally knew what to expect tomorrow morning.

Shanti Stupa (Peace Pagoda) on top of Ananda hill.

Turning around from our exploratory walk.

Machhapuchhre and a paraglider.

Super popular tourist activity in the afternoons.

My iPod and Sam’s reader needed charging, so we sat on the balcony with our little solar charger and enjoyed the scenery and the hippie vibes of the trekker village.  Hippie, because it definitely had an aura of bohemian/free-love/come-what-may/ colorfulness to it and pedestrians with dreadlocks, long flowing hair and beards, bellbottom and harlequin pants, ponchos, etc. could be found wherever we looked.  I told Sam he had found his community.  Next door to our new hotel is my favorite restaurant, Silk Road, and incense wafted up to us from their back garden.  Lakeside Pokhara felt exotic and we were giddy with relaxation and elation at our trekking accomplishments.

Trekkers get crazy when there isn't any trekking to be done.

Sam caught me talking to myself about how the patio could be used for entertaining guests.

Total relaxation mode. 

I was just about to tell Sam that I was hungry again when I looked down at the street and spotted, who else, Johnathan walking along and looking up at all the buildings.  Sam and I waved and called to him from our balcony perch and he quickly came up and spent the rest of the afternoon with us, sharing trail stories.  It was an exciting reunion and I forgot all about being hungry until my stomach rumbled at 6:00pm and our friend said he still needed to find a hotel – ours was too expensive for him at $10 a night.  We said goodbye to him and slipped down to Silk Road for more fries and chocolate milkshakes and to listen to the band that was jamming on the little stage inside the main room.  While Sam was paying, I chatted with the band: they were practicing for a competition that was starting the next day to kick off the beginning of an event called Potato Festival – I was told this festival had its roots back to when farmers would bring their crops in from harvest, mostly potatoes, and sell them.  The guys said I should come tomorrow, but I sadly informed them that Sam and I needed to be on a bus, so they changed the invitation and said I should come back next year.  We all laughed and joked, until our hotel manager came over and complained about the music being too loud.  After he left, the general consensus was that he was just upset because Sam and I kept going over to Silk for meals instead of eating at the hotel, but we were under no obligation to buy our meals from his place - that only applied to teahouses.  So, the jam session finished for the evening, I wished the guys luck and Sam and I climbed to our rooftop to watch the 6:30pm weak sunset – apparently, colorless sunsets are not just limited to the mountain region – and we rested until 8:00pm, then walked down to our favorite pizza joint to get dinner for later and tomorrow’s lunch on the bus.

You've had how many milkshakes?! 

Ok, so there's some color.

The pizza joint was packed full of people, the music was blaring, and it was a very exciting place.  I confidently strutted past some confused tourist guys, clean and obviously newbies, and went to the correct counter, ordered our pizzas, and asked for boxes, just like a local would have done it; Sam paid at the correct counter and then we navigated our way through the crowd to wait at an empty table.  The observant tourist boys followed my lead and timidly placed their order, but were called back because they didn’t understand the pre-pay procedure.  Five quick minutes later, our wonderful pizzas were pulled from the open fire pizza ovens and I cruised past the wide eyed boys with boxes of pizza in my arms, like a grand prize winner.  Now, we are giddy with our pizza loot and are going to bed at 8:30pm, but the atmosphere down on the street is so festive it is difficult to settle down and get to sleep.

Words cannot convey how much this pizza makes me happy.

Day 17: Birethanti - Pokhara

Our teahouse dining room, as seen from the road.

Last night, I turned off my watch alarm so we could sleep in as much as we wanted, but apparently our bodies had slept enough by 7:15am and we were up and ready for breakfast.  We ate under a covered patio, and had a terrific view of Machhapuchhre, also called Fish Tail mountain, and the sunrise.

Waiting for breakfast.

Our view of Fish Tail

Also our view.

Also our view...oh well.

I chatted with the woman who runs the teahouse and found out about the bus situation – what times it ran and how much it would cost – so Sam and I would know what was going on and not be idiot tourists when we arrived in Naya Pul.  Then, we packed and set out by 8:30am and walked at a quick pace so we would arrive in Naya Pul in time for the 9:00am bus to Pokhara.  We breezed through the shantytown section of Birethanti, where the townsfolk were busy with what Sam calls their “national pastime” of pounding rocks with hammers to create smaller rocks: they sit on piles of rocks, pounding away on them and it makes me appreciate our mechanical rock crushers.  We had a nice and cool walk and arrived in Naya Pul exactly at 9:00am, in time to see several trekkers making their way through the trashy, noisy, dirty, chicken filled village.  I was very glad we had not spent the night here.  There were two Israeli trekkers, looking fresh and clean and obviously newly arrived, heading toward us, so I stopped them and asked where the bus had dropped them, because we weren’t exactly sure which direction to take.  They indicated up a dirt embankment, so we climbed up and there was the main road.  

Our last photo on the trail - bittersweet.

As it happened, we popped up right at a taxi and the man leaning against the car wanted to take us, but I told him we wanted the bus and he, nodding his head, said to wait where we were.  It was obvious that we were in the right place, because there were food vendor stalls and an assortment of non-trekker people milling about on the side of the road with apparently nothing to occupy their time.  Just as I was making non-English conversation with a woman, a bus pulled up and Sam asked the ‘door boy’ if it was a bus headed to Pokhara.  It was.  We double-checked.  It really was, so we climbed aboard – I say climbed because we literally had to climb over sacks of rice and other grains to get to empty seats in the back of the bus.

We had a nice carnival ride to Pokhara with great views of the mountains, set off against the now lush green landscape of the lower elevation.  The bus made a couple of stops to add and subtract passengers, but mostly it bumped and swerved and jerked along the twisting two lane road, bali music blaring from a couple of overhead speakers.  Several people got sick at various points during the journey and I understood why there were barf bags stuffed into the seats.  The swaying ride didn’t bother me, though I feared it might because I hadn’t traveled faster than a brisk walk in 16 days, but no, I was fine and even enjoyed my peanut butter sandwich saved from breakfast.

Annapurna South

Machhapuchhre

At 10:45am, the bus arrived in Pokhara and made a couple of stops before the bus manager called back to us that we should get off at the next stop.  So, we made our way back over the sacks of rice and stepped off the bus when it stopped and found ourselves in the midst of a large crowd of people waiting for various buses in the blazing hot sun.  Traffic congested the streets, people shouted, horns beeped, and the cacophony was a sensory overload to two trekkers accustomed to hearing tree frogs and wind in the trees.  However, I was extremely proud of myself, because I didn’t stand there at the base of the bus steps with wide eyes wondering what to do, but jumped into action and started walking toward a taxi stand.  I asked a man where the bus stop was for buses to Lakeside and he pointed up and across the busy road.  Sam and I carefully made our way there and joined a group of brightly dressed locals, but there was a line of taxis also waiting in the area and Sam wanted to take a taxi, rather than wait for the bus, so we wedged ourselves and our packs into a tiny taxi car and were relieved to be out of the direct rays of the sun.  Our driver asked where we wanted to go and I said, “Lakeside” and he launched the car into the river of traffic.  The only exciting detail about the ride was an enormous brown and white cow sitting in the very center of the road, just relaxing like she was working on a suntan, while cars zoomed around her.  Our taxi man asked if we had a hotel and I said he could take us wherever he wanted.  This suited him just fine, because hotels and taxi drivers have an arrangement where the drivers get a small finder’s fee for bringing tourists to “their” hotels.  I wasn’t concerned, because if we didn’t like the hotel he brought us to, we could just walk down the street and choose one we liked better.  He pulled up to “his” hotel and Sam paid him 300 rupees, I think (about $3 usd), and we made our way inside the dark and moderately cool building.  The taxi got his hotel payoff from the manager and then the manager and Sam went upstairs to see a room while I waited downstairs with our packs.  The room met Sam’s approval, mostly because he didn’t want to look for another hotel, so we decided to stay, paid the 1,000 rupees, and flopped on the hard beds to rest our road weary bodies.

Waiting for a room.

After we had recuperated and skyped home using the hotel’s free wi-fi and my iPod Touch, we unpacked and decided to go out for lunch, it was 1:00pm, and do a bit of exploring.  Lakeside is the touristy district of Pokhara and is located beside Phewa lake.  Pokhara, specifically Lakeside, serves as a sort of basecamp for Annapurna trekkers, so we were definitely in good company here.  There was a festive feel about the place as people walked along the streets or puttered past on scooters or rumbled along on motorcycles.  We ate lunch in a back garden of a place called Silk Road.  I don’t know what I ate, some sort of rice and curry, not quite dal bat though, and had a “chocolate” milkshake: there was a taste in it that I couldn’t quite identify, but the drink was tasty nonetheless.  I could have sat there all afternoon in my swing chair, but Sam was ready to go explore some more, so we strolled down to the lake.  There were tons of tourists; since the sun was still baking hot, we didn’t linger there long.  We window shopped our way back to our hotel and took a nap until 5:30pm.

A lot of bikes...and rocks.

Sam thought this was great.

Love this chair swing.

Chocolate milkshake

Tal Bahari Temple is on an island on the lake.

A very full boat headed to the temple.

Sam, finding knock-off merchandise for sale.

For dinner, we decided to go to a pizza place we had passed earlier, so we strolled down the hushed, but still busy street to the simple pizza joint.  They have a strange way of handling the ordering and paying of the pizzas, which are all made to order and cooked as individual, dinner plate sized pizzas, so we were observant and got the process correct, as if we’d been ordering there our entire lives.  Our food arrived quickly and we devoured them nearly as quickly, while listening not to the usual bali crazy tunes, but to Aerosmith.  My milkshake was just that: milk that had been shaken.  We had a good laugh about it as we made our way, in the dark, back to the hotel, passing our lunch place that was having a live music party at that moment, and climbed to the hotel roof so I could get a couple of night photos.  I was able to take a few, right before half the street lost power and went black.

Pizza delivery bikes.

Super excited about this pizza.

It was 8:00pm when we made it back to our room and got the ancient tv to work and clicked through the channels until we found BBC and heard our first world news.: North Korea was threatening to missile South Korea, at the exact time we will be flying into Seoul.  I turned off the tv – who needs world news anyway.  We went to bed with the top windows open for fresh air, because the room was stifling, but I feared the bugs would get us; we slept with the bathroom light on, because I was convinced cockroaches wouldn’t crawl about if it wasn’t dark, but the light was only on when the generator was working, so it randomly turned off and on all night.