Dear Everyone
Today we made a most interesting drive from Kathmandu to Pokara, the
epicenter of trekking in the Annapurna Himalaya. We left our hotel in
Boudha at 8:00 AM with our guide Jawane, his 15-year-old son, our four porters, and the
driver and his brother. Our vehicle was a Toyota van that holds 12
passengers and lots of luggage. We arrived at our hotel in Pokara at 2:45 in the
afternoon with two stops, one that included having milk tea, McVittie's
Digestive Biscuits (yet another vestige of the British Empire in this part of
the world), and Peanut M&M's, and the other to deal with the liquid vestiges of the
metabolism of the tea from the first stop.
My first picture for you for today shows some of the traffic in Boudha that we
encountered near the stupa as we were leaving our neighborhood. The stupa was
teeming with people there for a special celebration. Never a dull moment
in KTM!
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| Traffic in Boudha |
The light tan smudges on the lower right side of the picture are my fingers
covering part of the lens on my iPhone as I held it out the window of the van
in a death grip. I love the smile on the guy driving the scooter, so I'm
particularly sad about the smudges, but I didn't drop my precious phone cum
camera.
As we climbed out of the Kathmandu Valley we were able to see the three
spectacular huge golden Buddha statues on the KTM Ring Road as well as the handsome Swayambudnath Stupa
gleaming golden atop its hill. The smog was particularly potent this
morning, so we were extra glad to be heading into the countryside. The
first about 1/4 of the route to Pokara is also the road from India to
Kathmandu, so we were treated to a parade of colorful trucks and busses
decorated with a vivid colors. The picture below -- still shooting with the
iPhone out the window -- shows a truck with sort of a medium level of
decoration, more in the Danish Modern genre as compared to Indian Subcontinent
Garish.
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| One of very many delightful colorful trucks climbing the hill to Kathmandu slowly enough to be photographed. |
As we climbed up to the ridges and descended into the river valleys, the
terraced landscape we were traversing went from dry "grazing"
terraces, to vegetable farms, and then rice paddies as we dropped to lower,
warmer elevations. There was a lot of activity in the rice terraces with
teams of water buffalo plowing the paddies and, as in Chitwan, groups of brightly dressed --red
is popular -- women transplanting the rice one seeding at a time. At one
point I could see six teams of water buffalo at work.
There were also
reforested areas and prosperous appearing market towns on the route.
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| Shops along the route from Kathmandu to Pokara. |
We are tucked into our hotel and have finished dinner. The menu had
Chinese, Nepali, Indian, and "Continental" food which = Italian and
hamburgers mainly. I was tempted to order the "pork cubs," but
settled on Aloo Mutter Curry from the Indian section of the menu. Spicy
hot and hotter is the norm here.
Today's best pictures I missed were a bus with a couple dozen goats riding
on the top and a woman sitting on her haunches under her umbrella who had been
joined by one of the ubiquitous yellow Nepali dogs -- they were sitting pretty
much nose-to-nose. Would have been a cute picture.
It has been raining steadily here in Pokara since we arrived -- there seems
to be a weather pattern that has been bringing us afternoon thunderstorms.
We start our trek tomorrow and hopefully we will get to out first lodging
before the thundershowers start.
We will be back at this hotel in 8-9 days and hopefully their WiFi will
kick back on this evening so this will reach you before we get back.
Maybe I'll be able to send you a note from the trek. We'll see.
Love and hugs,
Marian
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