Saturday 20 September 2008

Heaven is a place on earth... Pokhara

I love Pokhara. Its one of my favourite places on earth. A small alpine town by a mirror-flat lake in the mountains, where on crisp, clear mornings, entire mountain panoramas - Macchapucchare, Annapurna South and One, can be glimpsed in the horizon, seemingly at the edge of the town, at the end of a small, potholed road, which you would follow, on sunny mornings. And in the lake, a perfect reflection seen, if you're lucky enough.

I even had an address in Pokhara, at Lakeside 6, my room in the Rustika Guesthouse where i stayed for almost a month, getting to know my neighbours and going for walks in the morning around the lake, breathing the fresh morning air from the mountains, looking out into the calm, mirror-flat waters of the Phewa Tal, innumerable ripples drawn on them by the morning breeze, ruffling the evergreens that line the lake. Beyond was the hills, the evergreen forest leading all the way up, a rough cut trail in its midst, to the World Peace Pagoda, sitting serenely on top. Over the next few days we rented a boat and rowed out to the trailhead across the lake, and hiked up to the hilltop pagoda. It was beautiful, peaceful, looking down at the idyllic town by the lake. As if nothing in the world mattered anymore.

Pokhara also had these really charming stone buildings, much like cottages with their colourful frames and stunningly beautiful gardens - flowers of every colour lining window sills, balconies, and porches. The Switzerland of Asia, as they say. And not a bit wrong too. Going out of my guesthouse was a small road, lined with cafes and pop-and-mom stalls and family-run eateries - people i soon got to know really well, all of which whip up tasty, homely grub if you run low on cash or get bored of the restaurant scene on Lakeside, which is a revelation in itself.

We had great, sizzling slabs of steak cooked with rum washed down with Everest beer our first night in Pokhara, which really was quite a bit of a celebration of leaving India behind - it does get to you, after all those long weeks on the road with cows, crazed autorickshaw wallas and overpacked buses and trains. That said, the funny thing about India is that, i can't decide if i loved it or hated it, but one thing i know for sure is that i will go back, one day, soon. The dinner the first night with Dirk, the Dutchie i met in Varanasi, after winding up the hills in the pouring monsoon (it had come early), turning the mountains into pouring waterfalls and the roads into gushing rivers roaring down the edge. The bus was leaking too, not to mention - a steady dripping from the luggage racks above my seat. And all this while our backpacks were outside, strapped on top of the bus in the pouring rain, while the solitary goat inside the bus, trotting the aisle right next Dirk's seat, was nibbling at our shoes.

We longed to get to Pokhara. It seemed like heaven, after those weeks in India and the long ride up to the border at Sunauli and then Belahiya at the Nepali side, where we had spent the night, with 4 Japanese backpackers in a bedbug infested dorm room at the Nepali Guesthouse. We soon decided to spend the night getting wasted on Royal Stag whiskey with Coke at a nearby eatery, talking late into the night before slipping into bedbug-bitten sleep. Everyone was up at four in the semi darkness - cigarette buds glowing in the dark, people sharing a smoke, stumbling to the shower to wash off the terrible rash, and generally looking forward to getting on to either Pokhara or Kathmandu.

And so when we got to Pokhara, the rain slowing to a misty drizzle, we found it was heaven on earth. So beautiful, so peaceful that we fell in love with it immediately and spent much more time than we had ever intended.

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