Pokhara and white-water rafting

After the joy of being in the mountains, Pokhara took some adjusting to, an adjustment I never quite made. It's the second largest city in Nepal but the tourist area, which we never made it out of, is only a strip long and full of over-priced souvenir shops, stores full of counterfeit trekking gear and restaurants geared at foreigners. It was impossible to walk down the road without being hassled every few meters by proprieters wanting your business. I hated it. I was tired and overwhelmed and sad about the trek being over. Moreover, I got word on my arrival that political troubles in the Terai region meant that I couldn't go to the jungle in Chitwan National Park which I'd been so looking forward to.

On the plus side, the hotel room that Maria and I signed into had space to move around in, beds that were significantly larger than our bodies and two whole lights and an electric socket, not to mention an en-suite bathroom. So what if it lacked character, had stains on the carpets and walls, ants marching along the floor and a cockroach or two. It seemed like the lap of luxury to us.

Since I wasn't going to Chitwan, I found myself with four days to kill in Pokhara. On a whim, I signed up for a white-water rafting trip on the lower Marsyangdi river, which was exactly where we'd walked along on the first day of the trek. The rafting was great fun. There were plenty of decent rapids with lots of splash as well as opportunities to jump into the river and swim along. As a bonus, I knew about half of the people in the group because they'd been on the ACT as the same time as us. The company that we went with, Paddle Nepal, knew their stuff. It was a great day.

The second day in Pokhara I just hung out with Maria, wondered up and down the strip, then up and down again. I indulged in a 'trekkers' special' massage - a whole lot of pulling, pushing and prodding - aft5er which I felt mcuh better. In the afternoon, we rented a row boat and spent a deliciously calm three hours paddling on the lake, Phewa Tal.

On the third day Maria and I went paragliding, but I'll write that up in a separate post.