Adventures in China: She Dreamed of Paradise

Our second stop in Nepal was the beautiful city of Pokhara. It might be the second biggest city in Nepal, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Coming from the chaos of Kathmandu, it's wonderful to arrive at the shore of Phewa lake. No loud sounds, no rush. A small paradise.

The bus from Kathmandu to Pokhara takes about 8 hours. Because of obvious reasons, there are no trains in Nepal, so the only way to get from point A to point B is on wheels (I guess you could also walk if you really wanted to). The bus ride was quite an uncomfortable experience for me since my stomach hadn't fully recovered from the whole food poisoning debacle yet. I still managed to enjoy the senery though. Once you get over your fear of falling off the road, it's pretty spectacular. Luckily, as there is only one road that leads from Kathmandu to Pokhara, everyone has to drive VERY SLOWLY. So we got to Pokhara without a scratch and first of all had to look for a place to stay. We were accompanied on this endeavour by Taka, who we had met at the hostel in Kathmandu. The place we decided on was...well, let's say different. It was a small house built on top of a hill overlooking the lake. The room had two mattresses, one on the ground and one on a wooden bed. There was no running water, if you wanted to shower you walked for 20 minutes to a small waterfall. The undeniable advantage of this place was its view. It was also a little out of the way, ergo very quiet. And most importantly (to travelling students), 70 Rupees per night per person. That's 0.60 Euros. That does a lot to help you through cold nights without water and electricity. I just realized that I haven't even mentioned the whole electricity situation yet. Because Nepal doesn't produce/purchase enough power to meet demand, the power will just be out for large portions of the day. Technically there is an official schedule of when the power will be on/off, but apparently it's more of a suggestion than a rule. The first thing we would always do when coming into a hostel room? Plug our phone chargers in and cross our fingers. It's alright though, you get used to it after some time. Who needs lights anyway?

The first view of the lake.

On our first day in Pokhara, Fede and me decided to go to the World Peace Pagoda, a big white stupa built on one of the hills surrounding Phewa lake. To get there, we took a little boat from Lakeside, Pokhara's tourist quarter, and then walked up the hill. On our way there, we came across an incredible number of Chinese travellers. They really are everywhere. Slightly related sidenote: We met a lot of Nepalese businesspeople who were studying Chinese. Some shops in Kathmandu and Pokhara even have trilingual signs: Nepali, Chinese and English. The view from the pagoda was pretty amazing, it was there that I caught my first glimpse of the Annapurna range. Safe to say if I hadn't been in love with Nepal already, I would have fallen in love right then and there. On our way down from the pagoda we took a wrong turn somewhere but miraculously arrived at another one of Pokhara's famous sights: the Gupteshwor Mahadev cave/Devi's Falls. Here, you can pay twice to view the same waterfall, once from above and once from below :D The view from below is without question the better one, you walk into a fairly deep cave and finally arrive at where the waterfall enters it. It looks really cool in real life and really lame in photographs, maybe because my camera is a potato. Anyway, the rest of the day was spent relaxing in a café on the shore. They gave us free popcorn *_*

Same view, different day.

The pagoda.

Profound caption.

The falls from above.

And from below.

On the next day Fede, Taka and I went on a little hike. Wait, I went to Nepal and actually climbed a mountain? Don't worry, it was just a small one, 1500 metres if I remember correctly. Anyway, the walk was really beautiful, leading us through endless fields and small villages. It took us about 2 hours to arrive in the mountain village of Sarangkot. There, we booked a room that much to our surprise had a hot shower! So we enjoyed that obviously, and afterwards spent our evening playing cards with a few of the other guests of the hotel. And would you believe it, I learned 斗地主 (Fighting the Landlord), the most popular Chinese card game with ridiculously complicated rules. One step closer to complete integration into Chinese society!

Giant haystack!

There we go with the sunsets again.

What an attractive group of people.

We got up very early the next day to watch the sunrise. But this was not just any sunrise, this was the sunrise over Annapurna. And for this sunrise, you have to pay. No joke, you have to pay to get onto the observation platform. No matter though, that was some money well spent. The sunrise was breathtakingly beautiful. Pink sun on white mountains. Alo known as heaven on earth. The rest of the day? Walked back down and then went back to the aformentioned free popcorn café. Give me free popcorn and you will have my eternal loyalty. Sadly, the food poisoning hit Fede that evening, so he missed out on our last lakeside evening.