Walks around Pokhara

Alastair finally recovered from his illness and the effects of the medication, so we were able to do a couple of trips before school began.

On Thursday we walked down the Seti river, which runs through a 2 m wide gorge through most of Pokhara, to the point where it bursts turbulently from its confines and forms a fast moving stream about 50 m wide. The wider gorge it emerges into has a wide terrace half way up (rather like a miniature grand canyon) which supports a picturesquely
perched village. Strange grassy rock ridges(reminiscent of Bryce canyon) rise from the village to the top. After a nice lunch at the mountain museum, we make our way back on the other side of the road,
coming across a old man scooping fresh buffalo dung from the road with his hands; presumably to use as fuel.

Friday, we started at 6 am on a bolder adventure, to climb to the local beauty-spot and mountain viewing theater, Sarankot. We found our way out of the city, and climbed on a narrow path through increasingly
dense vegetation. Occasionally we passed clearings containing abandoned or half-finished buildings, one of which contained a rather frightening looking man who didn't answer our Namastes and watched with what we hoped was disinterest as we passed. There were many butterflies of all colours and some strange flower munching stripy things - bees or beetles?

Eventually we reached habitation and made our way to the look-out point at the top of the hill although, since there was too much cloud to see the mountains, we avoided the 30 rp fee to see the same hills we could see from below the view point. We also avoided paying 250 rps for vegetable chowmain (about 1 pound 80 - scandalous!) and retreated down the mountain to find something more reasonable priced (80 rp). On the way down we stopped to watch the paragliders launching
themselves from the hillside towards the lake shores below. There was a specially trained policeman, who assisted with dragging unresponsive tourist along the ground then they didn't react quickly enough to the
command "run run run!!". He also tried to prevent collisions, between gliders competing for take-off time - it was busier than Heathrow up there, with sometimes about 5 take-offs a minute.

The day was really hotting up, so we made our way down by a different route to take us to a more convenient part of town. It was never clear which path would take you there, so you just have to follow one and hope something convenient will turn up, but after some warmly contested decisions, we made our way down to a very welcome cold Lassi.