Pokhara

People traveling to Nepal for the purpose of trekking usually end up either near Mt. Everest to the northeast of Kathmandu or west of Kathmandu in Pokhara in the Annapurna Mountains.  I chose the latter.   

At 7:00 a.m. on June 18th, I boarded a bus for Pokhara.  The 125 mile road takes about 7 hours to negotiate.  It took a full hour and a half to climb out of the valley, go over the ridge and drop to the river bed in the next valley.  I’ve been on some windy, switchbacky, up-and-downy roads in my life, but this was one of the worst.  Our bus was but one of the many buses , trucks and cars wending their way along the perilously steep-sided switchbacks. 

Following the river in the next valley was an improvement, but only partially.  Plastic “relief” bags were made available during the trip for the less iron-stomached on the bus .  Nepal is crazy land for mountains.  Having said this, the scenery was beautiful.  All of the mountains are covered with lush vegetation and the valleys are full of bright green rice fields.  Natural beauty notwithstanding, I was pretty certain I would be taking a plane back to Kathmandu to avoid another bus ride like this one. 

Pokhara is a sprawling town on the shore of the Phewa Lake.  During the dry winter months, the Annaupurna  Mountains and specifically, Machhapuchhare (or Fishtail) form the backdrop to this gorgeous setting.  I caught a few early morning glimpses of the mountains during my stay and they are spectacular. 

Most of the time, however, the high mountains were obscured by clouds, but even that resulted in some beautiful scenes.

I had two goals upon my arrival, first, to enlist a guide for my trek (I had already generally decided where I wanted to go) and second, to visit the local SOS Children’s Village (more on this later).  In Pokhara, travel and adventure companies line the streets and during the monsoon season, everyone is hustling for some work.   My hostel recommended a guide and, upon meeting him, he struck me as competent so I thought it was set.  Then, a funny thing happened while wandering around town, as I was signaling to a street vender who I had met the night before, a young man thought I was signaling to him so he crossed the street to talk with me.  I thought, “Oh no, what does this guy want and how am I going to get rid of him?” 

We started talking and he told me that he was a guide.  After a very short time, I realized (1) that he spoke far better English than the hostel-recommended guide and (2) he had a very engaging personality.  As I started to think about it, 11 days trekking with someone who neither spoke good English nor seemed very approachable seemed like it would make an already difficult hike, even more challenging.  On the other hand, hiring a guide off the street seemed a little risky.  In the end, I bet on the nice guy and ended up the winner.  I will write later about the entire trek.

SOS Children’s Villages are a charity I support whose mission is (among other things) to provide a family-type setting for orphaned children throughout the world.  They seem to do a great job from the information I receive in the U.S., but since there was an actual SOS Village in Pokhara, I thought I would stop in for an on-site visit.  The SOS Village in Pokhara serves a unique demographic, the children of Tibetan refugees.  The village and accompanying grade school were beautiful and, except for the fact that there wasn’t a child to be seen , it looked like an ideal setting.  I finally found an open gate and walked to the back of the complex where I met a young Tibetan couple, Tseten and Tsering.  Tsering looked startled as I walked toward her and she quickly called her husband Tseten who appeared at the door of their apartment.  Thus began an afternoon of entertainment and laughter with two of the nicest people I have ever met. 

I was invited in for traditional Tibetan butter tea (it shouldn’t be a surprise when I say that it tastes a lot like melted butter) and eventually a delicious lunch.  Tseten teaches art at the school and he explained that since it was Saturday (duh), the kids were on a field trip.  I would have to come back if I wanted to see them.

 Like most of the Tibetan refugees in Nepal, both Tsering and Tseten had stories about how they left China as children, Tsering to move to Kathmandu to live with an uncle and Tseten, to study in India.  The thought of a young seven-year old Tseten leaving his parents behind in Tibet to travel to a refugee camp/school in India armed only with the hope that his life would be better brought tears to my eyes.   He later explained that although he has since seen his parents on a few occasions, it was never for more than a few hours at the border crossing with China.  Sadly, because his parents only speak their local Tibetan dialect, one which Tseten forgot long ago, their few reunions are simply times for each to look at the other and cry.   For Tseten, Tsring and their peers their stories were not extraordinary, but to my ears they were heartbreaking.  Yet somehow those beginnings produced two souls who project kindness and joy in every action.  I had somehow again managed to stumble upon people whose friendship would be life-altering.  The words “I so lucky” ran through my mind once again. 

I visited Tseten and Tsring after my trek.  This time I managed to show up during an all school assembly celebrating the birth of the Dalai Lama.  What a show!  Not only were the traditional Tibetan and Nepali dances creative and fun, but the costumes were better than any school program I’ve seen … beautiful silk, bells, silver, fur, necklaces, tassels and more than a few fake moustaches. 

This was not the crepe paper school assembly of my childhood, this was really nice.  Tseten’s class did an especially good job.

That evening I was treated to a quick cooking lesson from Tsering on how to make MoMo, a Tibetan style dumpling.  As was to be expected, my dumplings were misshapen and slightly unappealing, nothing like the consistently flawless ones that Tsering and even Tseten were churning out like machines. 

Ever patient, Tsering continued to work with me until we reached the last dumpling.  The meal was one of the most delicious I’ve had.  My lips burned with the spices (and I think she made it mild for me) but I HAD to keep eating.  Whether they intended this or not, Brad and Angelina (as I call them affectionately), are going to be lifelong friends. 

And I can’t wait to SKYPE with them when I get back to Houston so they can see the Tibetan prayer flags that are going up in our backyard.