Bandipur and Pokhara

I’m back in Kathmandu and in my pretty little apartment! Yes, yes, yes. Mer and I got back from our mini trip to Bandipur and Pokhara yesterday afternoon. The trip was really awesome overall; beautiful landscapes and nice people. However, we had some major issues with Pokhara and came back early because of them.

We got up early in the morning last Saturday to take a bus from Kathmandu to Bandipur. I was psyched to be leaving the Kathmandu pollution and chaos for the natural beauty promised to me by my Lonely Planet guide. Here’s some of the first views I saw:



It’s pretty well known that the cheaper Nepali tourist buses are not the best in the world (New York – Boston Chinatown buses are luxury style comparatively). We had paid around $11 for a 6 hour trip on this bus. We got what we paid for: the engine on our bus had to be sporadically pumped when we were going uphill. I reassured myself by saying “better a faulty engine than faulty breaks.”

At the first rest-stop we got to see a new delicacy of Nepal: gross fish.



It’s really impossible to describe how ridiculously gorgeous Bandipur is. Definitely the most prettiest mountain landscape I’ve ever seen. Lonely Planet said Bandipur had “gob-smacking” views. I don’t know what that means, but I totally agree anyways. Here’s a picture that can’t even begin to infer the true beauty of this place:



Mer and I settled into our $5/night hotel room, which was in a classical Newari building. Bandipur is known for being preserved really well as an old Newari town and you can really tell how hard the townspeople have worked to keep it maintained and unmarred. Our room was bathroomless and small but had a gobsmacking view that I couldn’t take my eyes off of. Here’s me in a new $.60 shirt in the village:



After a short rest, we took a huge uphill hike to Thani Mai, which, not surprisingly, has a gorgeous view. From here we could see the village of Bandipur:




Mer has a new camera that I wanted to impress, so I got crazy and climbed a tree:



One of the highlights of the entire trip was holding baby goats. I think I might start a goat-baby-holding hobby because it was so fun. There were tons of farm animals in Bandipur that Mer and I took great advantage of: Buffalo, goats, chickens, pigs and of course cow and dogs roaming the streets like they owned them – because they do. We took a lot of pictures of the various animals but I will only subject you to two of them:

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We were planning on going to the largest cave in Nepal which is about a three hour (one way) hike, but due to the monsoons the water was about knee deep inside of them and you had to wade through it to see the caves. This wouldn’t be so bad, but there were leeches in the water and that’s one animal I did not want to pet. Instead, we went on a little hike to go see worms make clothes. There’s a silk-worm farm in Bandipur that we decided to check out. The man who ran it gave us the tourist explanation of the silk-making process.



We gave him 200 rupees and then walked home. Besides baby-goats, beautiful views, and silk worms, we encountered our favorite restaurant of all time. Not only was it one of the cheapest places we’ve been to, it had the most amazing food I’ve ever tasted. We got lucky and ordered this amazing thing called a Shaslik which is a grilled kabob of cheese, tomato, and onions on a plate of rice. It’s actually a little painful to write about it because it was so good and I’m afraid we may not be able to find it again in such good form. Here’s Mer eating two Shasliks on our last day – look how sad she is that we are leaving it:



We left Bandipur after two nights to go to Pokhara, which is a city on a lake about two hours away. This is where we planned to stay almost a week – it’s a big tourist destination in Nepal. Buses from Bandipur to Pokhara left every hour and as we arrived at the bus area we were virtually attacked by locals to get on the buses that were imminently leaving. Sadly, we weren’t ushered INTO the bus, but ON TOP of the bus. This is something that Meredith has been dying to do. She did it before and was looking forward to doing it on this trip. Although I don’t regret going on top of the bus, I won’t do it again because it’s so stupid and dangerous. It’s not like one of those red New York City tour buses with railings and seats, it has a rack to tie luggage onto and that’s it. We were up there with a few locals and two Sadhus (wandering holy men). Here’s a picture of me with one of the locals holding on for dear life:



And it’s not like we were up there for ten minutes on good roads, we were up there for two hours on crappy roads that overlooked cliffs. Never again, Meredith, never again.

Amazingly, we arrived saftely in Pokhara. Taxi drivers, merchandisers, and hotel staff jumped on us as we got off the bus. Bandipur had none of this tourist-jumping and the constant barrage of sellers overwhelmed us. This is one of two things that essentially ruined the Pokhara trip. Maybe I’m being privileged and snotty and stupid, but it was frustrating to be in a city where everyone you met was trying to sell you something. Anyhow, here’s Pokhara being pretty:



Want to know what the second thing is that killed Pokhara? The cockroaches in my hotel bed. We probably should’ve sucked it up and paid for a nicer hotel room, but various (boring) circumstances prevented this decision. By the time we realized the cockroach situation was ever-present, we were too sick of Pokhara to do anything about it. Shusila was supposed to come visit, but we called her and let her know our feelings about P-town. The two fun things we did in Pokhara was go to a temple in the middle of the lake and a temple on top of a hill.

On our way to the temple in the middle of the Phewa Tal (the Pokhara Lake), we passed by this dock with these Japanese kids sitting on it:



We shouted at them to jump in:



At the temple we got a small taste of drunk Nepali homophobia, fed some insanely large fish corn, and I got a tika (the colored Hindu smudges on the forehead).

The next day, on my urging, we took a boat across the lake to hike up to the World Peace Pagoda. There are several ways to get the Pagoda, one of which is a mild up hill 2 hour hike, the other a steep 45 minute hike. I convinced Mer to take the 45 minute hike straight up. The whole way up Meredith told me about how much she hated me for persuading her to go up this way. It was horribly steep and took us much longer than 45 minutes because we are not in shape. On the other hand, it was totally worth it to go up there:



A bunch of monks were coming there in the next few days, so there were some people cleaning the steps of the Pagoda. We conducted almost a full conversation in Nepali with one of the cleaners. Here’s a good picture I took:



We decided to take the long way back down and I promptly got a shin splint which made it take twice as long as it should’ve. We had planned on taking a full day hike the next day, but with cockroaches, sellers, and shin splint it was time to leave.