Pokhara

1 May 2009 - 10 May 2009

We arrived in Pokhara after a six hour bus ride that was pure comfort when compared with our previous Nepali bus rides. Then the taxi ride through Pokhara's clean, quiet lakeside area showed me a place I knew I was going to like. The beautiful lake is rimmed by mountains, well, hills when compared with the massive Himalayan peaks towering over the town, and it is a stunning place. From the bus station you can see the best view any bus station in the world has to offer.

Our hotel, Hidden Paradise, was set up on a mountain overlooking Fewa Lake. After trekking and a week in hectic, rioting, demonstrating Kathmandu, I can't say it was eas

y to talk us into leaving our lovely room, but we managed it a few times. On several of the days on which we'd planned outings we kept in due to heavy storms that dumped buckets of rain, presented great flashes of lightning and shook the hills with booming thunder. The bright side to this was of course that we didn't have to leave and could instead take some time relax. The storms in Pokhara are incredible and reading that two people were hit by lightening during one of the storms we'd witnessed, our decision to stay in was confirmed as a wise one.

Despite the storms, we did manage to make it out and explore a bit. The lakeside village has stacks of places to eat, cool bars and more shops selling souvenirs than you could poke a stick at, so wandering around was interesting. Pokhara also has English bookstores, so we went a little book mad. During the nine days we stayed there, I read about seven books; having been starved of English books for several weeks I absolutely gorged myself on them!

I wouldn't say that we were keen to leave Pokhara, but our six months on holiday was nearing an end and beaches in Thailand were calling our names, so we bade goodbye to the lovely guys who run Hidden Paradise and set off back to crazy Kathmandu.