Paragliding, hiking and mountain biking in Pokhara

by Vincent

The touristic neighbourhood, called "Lakeside", is like Thamel in Kathmandu: many shops, restaurants, spas, etc.

Flying over the city and the lake...

... and over the fields

It almost looks like I'm alone and piloting!

A paraglider ready to land next to the lake.

A human trying to fly like a bird by following a hawk. We call it "Parahawking"!

View from the World Peace Pagoda.

The World Peace Pagoda is a Buddhist monument offered by the Japanese to Pokhara.

A buddha in the World Peace Pagoda

A lot of boats in the lake...

On the last day, the weather was better.

We could even see a piece of a snowy mountain! But nothing more...

At the International Mountain Museum, we can see some equipement from prestigious mountaineering expeditions. On this photo, some equipement from the French expedition of 1950 on the Annapurna, which was the expedition that first climbed a peak over 8000m.

After eating this steak, I met Raoul the next morning.

Most of the tourists in Pokhara are trekkers who are going to start a trek or who come back from it. Indeed, Pokhara is located close to the Annapurna mountain range and the Annapurna Circuit and Annapurna Sanctuary treks are among the most popular treks in Nepal. It wasn't my case since my knee didn't allow me to discover the mountains. But there are many others things to do in Pokhara. One of the main attraction is the fantastic view on the snowy mountains. On a clear day, you can see all the Annapurnas with the Machhapuchhare as the most emblematic and holy mountain (it is not allowed to climb it), as well as the Dhaulagiri. I stayed 3 days and a half in Pokhara and I've seen almost no snowy mountain at all! The weather was quite bad, rainy and foggy. Every evening, there was a huge rain shower like if it was the monsoon.

But even if I wasn't able to go trekking in the mountains, I practiced a lot of others activities. On the first day, I went paragliding from Sarangkot, a hill next to Pokhara which has the reputation of being one of the best place of the world for paragliding. I had booked a cross-country flight of one hour but the conditions were not very good so my Swiss pilot told me during the flight that we couldn't do it. It was such a nice experience anyway. We were flying over the mountains and the lake Phewa Tal with the hawks. I had already done some paragliding before in Bolivia but that time, it was really better. And it was a good decision not to do the cross-country flight. 5 minutes after we landed, a big rainfall started. A Russian pilot with its client were still in the sky and didn't manage to land anywhere else than in the middle of the lake...

On the second day, I went for a walk to the World Peace Pagoda on top of a hill close to Pokhara. There are various options to get there but I chose the free one which requires to walk around the lake and then to climb up in the forest. When I arrived at the entrance of the forest, I saw a sign with a warning: "Don't walk alone, do not take valuables with you, thefts and attacks have been reported". I was alone, I had all of my money with me but I decided to continue anyway. Two minutes later, I met a kid who advised me again not to go, that it was dangerous. I started to worry a bit. The kid wanted of course to sell me his services of guide. He was asking for 1500 Roopies. Finally, I gave him 200 and he took me to the World Peace Pagoda.

On the last day, I rented a mountain bike and went up to Sarangkot again. The way was very steep and the hot weather didn't really help but it was a really nice trip. The view from the top was very nice even if I still couln't see any snowy mountain. Pokhara was a very cool place. I just hope that next time I come there, it will be for going in the snowy mountains instead of trying to see them...

In the jungle of Chitwan National Park

by Vincent

Kids playing close to the rice plantations

Typical houses in a village

Woman at work

Sunset...

An elephant and its baby of 6 days in a breeding center

The jungle!

Following the guide and trying to spot animals...

Workers coming back from the jungle where they cut herbs

A tiger track!

Beautiful flowers

The popular bath of the elephants that tourists can enjoy as well

A termite nest

Crocodiles! These ones were in a breeding center (sponsored by Lacoste, with the slogan "Save your logo"!) but we also saw some more in the nature.

Elephant at sunrise

Elephant safari in the jungle. Not so comfortable after 45min!

A rhino ready for a bath

Bambi!

Because of the problem with my knee, I wasn't able to do my initial plans of trekking in the Everest region an somewhere else in Nepal. Moreover, Berit had left a few days before so I was alone. I was supposed to stay one or two more months in Nepal. There was not so many solutions for me to replace my initial plans. There is not much to do in Nepal if you can't trek in the mountains. I wasn't really excited to travel to another country close to Nepal either. I was tempted a moment to go to Tibet but it is so complicated and expensive! It is impossible to cross the Nepal-Tibet border independently, you have to cross it with a travel agency, which means that you have to take a tour which consists in staying in a bus during a week and visiting Lhasa for 750€! This is definitely not my thing. If one day I go to Tibet, I think it will be to the Mansarovar lake and the Mount Kailas, starting by a long trek from the West of Nepal. So finally I decided to stay 2 more weeks to discover others places of interest in Nepal. I had spent some time planning these 2 weeks and had decided of a date to return to France. But when I went to the offices of Qatar Airways to change the date of my flight ticket, the woman told me there were only two flights with free seats: one 3 days before and one 4 days later... So I had to shorten even more my trip.

The first destination of the rest of my trip was Chitwan National Park. Nepal is very famous all over the world for its mountains but not many people know that there are also jungles! Chitwan National Park is at an elevation of 150m (so 8700m less than Everest) and has an area of 932km². There are many things to do in the park and during the two days I stayed there, I tried a few of them. The walk in the jungle is one of the most popular but some people prefer not to do it after reading about the risks in their guidebook...

There are two guides for a group of tourists doing a walk in the jungle: one at the front and one at the back. The only thing they have to protect you is a bamboo stick. Since I was alone in my group, I had two guides just for me! When we started entering the jungle, one of the guide stopped and started to talk about the various risks, the potential dangerous animals and the way to react in case you meet an animal which is not happy about your presence:

• rhinos: climb in a tree or hide behind a tree and expect the rhino to charge the tree a few times. If you don't find a tree, run in zigzag!
• sloth bears: don't run, stay in group and let the guide hit the ground with its stick to frighten him.
• elephants: run run run!!!
• tigers: don't run, look the animal in its eyes and move back slowly.

After this little explanation at the beginning of the safari, the only thing you hope is that you will actually not meet any animal! Especially the tigers: how can you stay in front of a tiger looking in its eyes? During the walk, every cracking sound of a branch made my heart beat stronger! But finally, like most of the safaris I did before, we didn't meet so many animals during the walk: some peacocks, some dears, some wild chickens, some nice birds (the kingfisher for example), some monkeys and a sleepy rhino. But I also did a Jeep and an Elephant safari which allowed me to see more creatures.

Bhaktapur

by Vincent

Durbar square

Golden door

Narrow street with souvenir shops

Pottery square

Posing in front of an imposing temple

 

 

Women sculpting wood

Typical Nepalese puppets

We can find some erotic sculptures on some munuments in Nepal...

Close to Kathmandu, in the same valley, there are a couple of others cities which are worth a visit. Bhaktapur is one of them. This town is like an open-air museum: there are very well preserved temples, monuments and statues everywhere. Since there is no traffic and not so many people, it's a very calm and peaceful place, perfect for getting lost in the narrow streets linking the three main squares. The only thing you have to take care of is the slyness of the guides. In Durbar Square, all of them want to take you for a tour in the city for the whole day. One of them who spoke French followed us with insistence during 5 minutes. We told him 20 times that we were not interested but he said he wanted to stay with us to improve his French!

The city has also a lot of craftsman who sell very nice things. Bhaktapur is famous for sculptures and pottery in particular. And after walking a few hours in the streets, there are many nice restaurants and cafes on terraces, perfect for having a rest, eating good food and looking at the Nepalese life in the squares...

Kathmandu

by Vincent

Busy streets of Kathmandu

In Kathmandu, there is a small temple in almost every junction

Durbar Square, the heart of the city

Kathmandu seen from the tower of Basantapur

A woman praying in front of a statue in Durbar Square

Men talking in Durbar Square

Rickshaws waiting for tourists in Durbar Square

Ali Baba shop

One of the many fruit seller you find in the streets. Bananas are delicious!

Who wants some dry fish?

Thamel by night. The touristic neighbourhood.

The beautiful "Garden of Dreams" in Thamel

Chicken sizzler, momos and a tongba, the huge Tibetan beer served hot and made with millet.

The day after the trek: a good Italian pizza with James and Alice, the English couple we met in Langtang.

The famous Dhal Bhat in a Newar restaurant. Nepalese eat it every day!

Typical Nepalese dances in a Newar restaurant

Signatures of some of the most famous mountaineers at Rum Doodle Bar. Among them: Reinhold Messner (probably the greatest climber in history, renowned for making the first solo ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen and for being the first climber to ascend all fourteen peaks over 8000m), Sir Edmund Hillary (the first who climbed Everest in 1953 with Tenzing Norgay), Maurice Herzog (the leader of the French expedition that first climbed a peak over 8000m, Annapurna, in 1950)  Rob Hall and Chris Bonnington. During my stay in Kathmandu, I also met a few times the guide I was supposed to go with in the Everest region. He had climbed Everest as well as 4 others 8000m peaks. It was really interesting to talk with him about his experiences.

We had spent one day in Kathmandu before our trek in the Langtang region but it was just to organise the trek (permits, national park entrance fee, shopping, etc.) so we didn't really have time to see the city. But there is a little story worth telling... To go to Langtang, we needed to buy a bus ticket but the thing is that you actually need to go to the bus station to buy the tickets. Since we were short on time (the station was quite far), we decided to pay the services of one of the travel agencies of Kathmandu to do it for us. We came to that agency in the morning and they told us to come back in the afternoon to collect our tickets. So I came back in the afternoon. It was another guy at the office. He looked for my tickets in all drawers and finally found a piece of paper completely crumpled that he gave to me. It was written in Nepali so I couldn't understand anything except some numbers: 6.30. But the bus we had booked was at 7.30. So I told him there was a mistake and the guy answered that 7 is written like 6 in Nepali. Are you joking? Do you think I'm a stupid tourist who will accept a crumpled paper with the wrong time as a bus ticket? He insisted and on my side, I started to be angry and a bit rude with him. But after some more discussions, I accepted the ticket and left the office. Later, I asked another Nepalese to see if the ticket was for 7.30 and he confirmed. So that was it: we discovered that Nepalese write numbers differently and it's very confusing for us: 7 is written like 6 but there is also 1 written as 9, 4 written as 8, etc...

After the trek, we came back to Kathmandu. Berit had to leave 3 days later to start her new job in Norway and I was staying in Nepal longer to do another trek in the Everest region. The capital of Nepal is clearly not one of the most beautiful city of Asia. But it's probably one of the most polluted. Because of its location in a valley and of bad atmospheric conditions, the pollution is stuck and makes the tourists stay as short as possible in the city. From what I heard from my parents and from what is written in the Lonely Planet, Kathmandu was the destination of hippies and drug addicts in the 60's/70's. Even if there are still people proposing drugs every 500m, the tourist prototype has completely changed. Now, it is full of trekkers ready to start a trek or coming back from it.

Most of them stay in Thamel, the huge touristic neighbourhood, full of shops (selling textiles, Tibetan carpets, thangkas, CDs, books and fake mountain equipment), restaurants and bars which reminded me of what you can see in Thailand. The neighbourhood doesn't really look Nepalese but it was not so bad to come across good restaurants (very good pizzas!) and bakeries again. We can also find a beautiful and peaceful garden, "The garden of dreams" which is a very welcomed place in the middle of the chaos of Kathmandu.

The rest of the city is not so uninteresting. There are hidden temples everywhere, small shops selling all kind of things and a lot of narrow busy streets. The main sight is Durbar Square, the heart of the city with the most spectacular monuments of the capital.

After Berit left, I stayed longer in Kathmandu. During the trek in Langtang, I had my right knee constantly inflamed and swollen. For those who don't know, I had been operated of my crossed ligament more than 6 months before. However, my doctor in Barcelona had confirmed me before to travel that there was no problem to do intensive trekking and mountaineering. He even said it would be good for re-building the muscles of my leg and wrote a certificate. I wasn't worried until I called my mother. I was thinking it was normal that my knee reacted like that. So I went to see the doctor of the French Embassy to have an opinion from a specialist. His verdict was immediate: don't go to the Everest region. Not completely convinced, I asked about my situation on some forums on Internet, asked some friends who had been operated before and went to see another doctor at a private clinic in Kathmandu. After a lot of research and advices, I had to accept the obviousness of the situation: I had to cancel my trek in the Everest region, as well as my others plans. It was a big deception because I had spent a lot of time planning and I was looking forward to this since a long time. And it is so infuriating not to do it whereas I was already there, to think that I would have to come back to do it. But well, that was the good decision and it's better to take no risk with health. However, I'm a bit annoyed by the advice of my doctor in Barcelona. He was wrong and he's a bit responsible.

So I had to change my plans... Shorten my travel and go somewhere else. In the next posts, I will describe the trek I was suppose to do in the Everest region as well as the others regions of Nepal I visited.