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| The view while writing this post |
Before I keep talking about Pokhara though, I should probably give you
a few updates regarding what we’ve been up to the past few days.
Obligatory “Happenings”
Update
Since the last blog post, we
spent two more days in the Thamel (the crowded, dusty, touristy area of
Kathmandu) which mostly consisted of eating meals with Barry (one of the EDC
course staff members from Colorado), Bhupal (our great friend from Ilam, Nepal)
and Joanne. Joanne is a new friend
from Quebec and therefore has an awesome French-Canadian accent. More
importantly, she is here to help NCDC with a “One School, One Nursery” program
where they try to create nurseries (but actually more like gardens) for certain
schools with the aim of teach kids the importance of protecting earth’s natural
resources and the effects climate change can have on these resources…or at
least that’s how I understood the program.
Anyway, we didn’t have plans for Saturday but then we ended up having
both lunch and dinner with Barry, Bhupal and Joanne. We had some great discussion about a bunch of different topics
including Mormons in Salt Lake City, Joanne’s stain glass hobby (which we
really enjoyed hearing about), the Canadian government, and some other topics
as well.
On Sunday, we planned to go to Dhulikhel, which is where my 2013 EDC
summer course was located, but it didn’t work out. So Stephanie and I decided
to roam around the Thamel, buy a few things, eat at “Momo Hut” (momos delicious
dumpling-like things) but then it was
1:00 pm and we ran out of things to do. So then we decided to go to one of our
favorite restaurants and order a bottle of wine because we had nothing better
to do on a Sunday afternoon…what a difficult life, right?
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| Killing time with a bottle of wine and chess |
Later we got a call from Bhupal saying that we would have dinner with
him, Joanne, some other NCDC staff members, and Barry. He couldn’t get ahold of
Barry though so we then had to go on a “Barry hunt” to tell him about the
dinner plans. This was fine with us because it finally gave us something to do.
Once we succeeded in our Barry hunt and updated him with the plans, we still had some time to kill before we
left for dinner. So what did we do as the responsible adults we are? Ordered
another bottle of wine to kill the time. We then left for dinner with the
crowd and kept our cool (or at least I thought we did) and had a lovely dinner.
The dinner was especially great because
it concluded with Barry and the other Nepalis singing Nepali folk songs which
was fun to hear.
Visiting Khanalthok
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| Crowded bus on the way to Khanalthok |
On Monday, we met another friend from my 2013 EDC course, Matina, and
went to visit the village I lived in for a week during the EDC course,
Khanalthok. Like all the other Nepali
friends, it was nice to catch up with Matina and hear about her new work and
her applications for graduate school in the US. Matina’s friend Jeevan also
joined us which was nice.
We first met at one of the bus parks in Kathmandu to take one bus to
Dhulikhel (or the area of Dhulikhel? I’m still not sure where we went). We then
transferred busses to get to Khanalthok and to our delight, we were able to get
seats. Once we got off the bus we had to
walk up the hill to our destination and were told it would only take 45
minutes. 45 minutes turned into 1.5 hours and we were then greeted with dal
bhat.
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| View from the village |
Once we reached the area I lived
in last year, the memories flooded through my mind and every place I looked
seemed to remind me of something. The giant tree where the community would
sometimes meet, the place where we briefly played Frisbee with the kids, the
place where we played “monkey in the middle” with the kids, the place where the
men would test to see the fat content of their milk every morning which would
determine how much they could sell it for, and so on. I was also reminded of the beauty of this place which sits on the ridge
of a hill and is surrounded by beautiful hills.
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| Stephanie with the 3-day old goat |
On Tuesday morning, I was able
to meet with my host family and it was great. They were just as I
remembered them but I noticed a few differences. The dad had a new Nepali hat,
the mom had a few more grey hairs, and they had a new satellite dish for their
TV. We sat and tried to briefly catch up, with Matina as the translator, and it
was quite nice. They even asked how my mom, dad and sister were doing which was
really nice. They also of course
insisted on us staying to have a meal with them and asked when I would come
back. To continue, they insisted that I would stay with them when I come back
because I now knew how to get here on my own. However, I told them I would have
to learn a bit (a lot) more Nepali if I came back by myself. So we’ll see.
But overall, it was great to see them again and I felt sort of “recharged”
after seeing them.
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| Jeevan, Caroline, Ama, Baba, Matina, Stephanie, Didi |
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| View of the mountains - barely shown in this picture. |
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| Tired after the hot hike down |
Pokhara Bus Ride
On Wednesday morning we left for
Pokhara at 7:00 am for our 7.5 hour which cost only 750 NPR ($7.5). When we
arranged our tickets, we asked to sit on the right side of the bus because I
read that we would have a better view on the right side. This turned out to be
a great decision because for about 3 hours
of the ride, the road followed an adjacent river and I felt like I couldn’t
take my eyes off it. My love for water and also my civil engineering brain had
all sorts of thoughts along the way: why did they put that pedestrian
bridge there? How would kayakers or rafters get through that rapid? How do they
keep the surrounding slopes stable? Why was it more blue-looking upriver
compared to down river? And the list went on. I wanted to read my book on the bus but I simply couldn’t with how
beautiful everything was.
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| View from the bus |
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| View from the bus |
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| View from the bus |
Soon enough, we arrived to
Pokhara and had no idea where to go nor stay. Luckily, there are a ton of
backpackers here as well so we could just follow the backpacker crowd to find
where the infamous lake is located and then we bargained at various places to
find a hotel.
The day ended in a relaxing way by taking advantage of happy hour deals
and then having dinner with a girl who sat in front of us on the bus, Nicole. Nicole is from Germany and recently quit
her job as a successful textile designer to go on a six-month holiday to
Nepal, India, Hong Kong, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Chicago (and
Kalamazoo!), then back home. It would have been nice to hang out with her
longer but she had to get back at a certain time for her massage appointment
and then left for her trek the following day (today).
We plan to stay in Pokhara for
six days total and we don’t have many plans. We’d like to go paragliding
one day and maybe go canoeing on the lake a few days but we’ll see how it all
turns out. For now though we’ll just stay in the moment and once I finish this
blog, the next big decision will be where we should have lunch. So yet again,
there is no reason for us to complain and with us only having basically seven
days left of our trip we’re trying to soak it all in!
Things I’ll Miss
·
Wearing
sandals every day: I love not having to wear socks and it’s going to suck
having to adjust to the cold weather back home. The weather is absolutely
perfect here with clear blue skies on most days and is probably like September
weather in Michigan.
·
Not
caring what time it is: It’s great rarely having the urge to see what time
it is. It’s quite liberating and some days, I try to go the whole day without
looking at a clock.
·
Dal bhat:
Did I just say that? One year ago I never would’ve guessed I would miss dal
bhat but I actually will miss it. I like the flavors of the dal and side
vegetables and it’s nice because it’s sort of a “make your own meal” thing. You
can add whatever proportion of dal you want to your rice, you can always
request more or less vegetables and the combination of flavors is (usually)
always great.
·
Nepal’s
scenery: this goes without saying. Just see the scenic pictures.
·
Nepal’s
friendly people: I think this also goes without saying based on all my
previous blog posts. I love their warm hearts and open arms.
·
“Being on
holiday”: as people call it hear. We don’t often have a wake up time and
every day is a new adventure. I am starting to get a bit restless with this
idea though because I want to start being more productive and less of a
backpacking bum.
·
Meeting
so many interesting people: we keep thinking about how lucky we have been
to meet such amazing people these past 12 weeks. Everyone has their own sort of
passion where their eyes will light up when they talk about it and that’s maybe
one of my favorite parts of the trip: seeing people get excited about something
they really care about when they talk about it.
Things I Won’t Miss
·
Living
Out of a Backpack: it really hasn’t been as bad as I expected but packing
and repacking my backpack in a logistical way so I can easily get to everything
has gotten a bit tiring.
·
White
bread toast: By being in tourist places we are able to get breakfasts that
are comforting to us: eggs with toast and a side of sautéed potatoes. But I’m a
wheat-bread-eater so this white bread is getting old.
·
Bumpy
roads: With Nepal’s terrain, its economic status, and heavy monsoon season,
it goes without saying that they’ll have some bumpy roads. I really don’t mind
them because it is what it is, but I definitely won’t complain about Michigan’s
roads when I come home.
·
Indian/Nepali
beds: they’re very hard and at times very difficult to sleep on.
·
Clean
bathrooms with toilet paper in them: it’s always a gamble with every
bathroom we enter whether it’ll be clean and whether it’ll have toilet paper,
both of which are unlikely (but luckily in Pokhara we’ve had a 100% success
rate so far!)
·
Repeating
“our story”: with every person we meet, we have to tell them “our story.”
It goes something like this:
New friend: So
where are you from?
Us: We’re
from US (or sometimes “America” is better understood)
New friend:
Which state in the US?
Us:
Michigan. It’s kind of near Chicago.
New friend:
Oh, okay. What brings you to Nepal?
Us: We’ve
been in Nepal for X weeks and only have X weeks left. We were in Ilam for two
weeks visiting friends at an NGO then went to Kathmandu for about 1.5 weeks and
we’ll finish with Pokhara. Then we go home! Before that we were also in India
for eight weeks which was interesting.
New friend:
Wow, where were you in India?
Us: We
traveled Rajasthan for about three weeks, went to northern India for a bit and
then got stuck in Rishikesh for 3.5 weeks were we stayed in a Yoga ashram for
one of those weeks
New friend: Cool,
so what do you like more, India or Nepal?
Us: We like
Nepal because the people are generally friendlier and the scenery is great. But
there’s also great people in India. It’s just a crazy and chaotic country as
well.
New friend:
So what are you studying/did you study?
Us: We both
just graduated last May. Caroline’s in civil engineering and Stephanie is a
social worker so we have different perspectives about stuff.
And then the
conversation goes somewhere else. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve
repeated this story but we can tell you that it’s a lot. While we shouldn’t complain about it, because it’s part of
the backpacking process, it does get a bit old.
Various Comments
·
I never spent much time in book stores before
this trip. But now that I’ve had time to read, I’ve spent a good amount of time
in book stores and boy, are they overwhelming. There’s too many options so I
end up judging a book by its title, reading the back and then judge it further
from there. Yesterday, I settled on a book titled A Hundred and One Days by Asne Seierstad which is about a
journalist’s time in Iraq for 101 days in 2003.
·
Only 15 days until Jimmy Johns Sandwich Day.
Caroline’s Song of the Day
1-Nov Save the Last Dance For Me by Michael Buble
2-Nov Cabaret by Justin Timberlake
3-Nov The Plains / Bitter Dancer by Fleet Foxes
4-Nov Move It by Balkan Beat Box
5-Nov 15 Step by Radiohead
6-Nov I Wanna Know Now by Xaphoon Jones
