Walk around Pokhara

Last Thursday we set out early on an excursion to the world peace Stupa: a Buddhist temple perched on a hill above the lake. After a one hour walk through the town we came to the fast flowing river running out of Phewa lake. Our way across was via a rickety suspension bridge with many rotten planks and some missing entirely. You didn’t want to be the unlucky person who finally broke through the wood, although only your leg would fall through. Probably. On the far side, we were accosted by a young man, a little smelly, who, uninvited, took on the role of guide. He pointed to a dubious looking sign post saying that foreigners must have a guide to enter the forest and warned us of difficult route finding, bandits and snakes. Walking along the edge of the forest, trying to block out the guides prattle about how many friends he had in Europe, we saw some beautiful butterflies dancing above the paddy fields. We followed the guide up the forest track and past a temple on a massive, easy to follow track and then managed to persuade him to leave us alone, although he seem upset and claimed that we didn’t think him a ‘good person’.

Bandits and snakes seemed to be on holiday that day, but we were frequently troubled by a much more slippery adversary: the leach.  They were everywhere amongst the leaf litter at our feet, some a good two inches long, and stood on end, swaying gently as though trying to hypnotise their victims. When they latch onto your shoe they loop steadily upwards in search of exposed flesh and a bloody meal, but in our case they were foiled by a cunning tactic borrowed from the British rambler –  our trousers were tucked into our socks. Despite this protection, it was still necessary to stop every five minutes and flick, pull or prize a few leaches off our shoes and socks. Thankfully it seems the Pokhara leaches hadn’t learnt all the gorilla tactics Alastair experience before when trekking in the Helambu area. There the leaches will hide in trees and, on sensing your approach, drop onto the back of your head and neck. It makes you paranoid about every drop of water which lands on you.

 

After about an hour of walking we emerged onto the ridge top and strolled along a delightfully leach free path to the stupa. The building of the Stupa was a Japanese led project in collaboration with Nepal and other countries, but was halted by planning restrictions for many years: a sure sign Nepal is slowly moving up the development ladder. The Gompa itself (the word stupa is not used by locals) is a two story white dome, with four golden statues depicting the Buddha and his wisdom, spaced around it’s circumference. The views over the Pokhara valley are spectacular, but we can only imagine what it’s like when the high Himalaya emerge from the clouds.

We walk down the hill into the valley and explore a famous local cave cum temple. It’s not especially spectacular compared to the caves at Ingleton for example, but the fact that it’s lit by Nepal’s notoriously unreliable power supply (power cuts occur every other evening and last hours) adds an extra frission to the experience. Across the road from the cave is a spectacular slot of a gorge into which a river turbulently disappears, mining strange shapes out of the local conglomerate. To complete our day, we make out way back through the paddy fields to Pokhara, stopping for a well earned drink and watching some boys diving and somersaulting into a stream running through the city.