My new favorite hotel

I was walking around Pokhara, Nepal when I saw this sign.

Maybe it means something else in Nepali?

I want to stay there just to see what it's like. Is the name of the place designed to lower the expectations of visitors? If you complain about the water not being hot enough or the TV not working, do they say, "You're staying in the Mea Culpa, what do you expect?"

I was walking around getting the permits for my hike. I love this town. It's quite warm here during the day, shorts and tshirts weather. Heck, it's night time as I'm writing this and I'm still in a tshirt. But it wasn't a perfect day. There were clouds in the sky.


Don't see them? Look just above the trees. The clouds are below the mountaintops.

Ready, set, go

I have my permits. I have just about all the supplies I'll need. I have a bus ticket. All that remains is the hike. All 21+ days of it...

I did the Annapurna Sanctuary hike last year by myself. No porter, no guide, just me and my backpack. It was tough but immensely satisfying. Last year when I hiked here I had already done the Everest Base Camp hike, so I was acclimatized and had my legs under me. This year I'm starting cold.

I have plenty of time to do the hike before my visa expires so I'm going to take my time. The key to avoiding altitude sickness is not over-exerting yourself. I am looking forward to the hike, generally considered to be the best in Nepal -- and that's saying something.

I am not looking forward to Thorung La, a 5,416 meter (17,900 feet) pass I will have to cross in about 10 days. I got up to 5,550 meters on the Everest hike, and it was brutal. This time I'll be carrying a full pack. Wish me luck.

The blog will continue while I am gone. I've got a few posts I've scheduled to publish every few days while I'm gone.

Travel tips: Nepal

To my great surprise, people actually seem to be reading my blog. It's fun to write, but even more so knowing someone is paying attention.

I've tried to focus on the positive and only write about negative experiences if I can find the humor in them, or if there's some sort of lesson to be learned. There have been too many great experiences and so many fantastic people to write about, so it doesn't make sense to waste any time on the the few exceptions.

However, perhaps it makes sense for me to at least point out cities, hostels, restaurants, travel agents, etc., that I think should be avoided, as well as ones that are worth checking out.

Thus begins the first installment of travel tips:

In Kathmandu, if you're looking for a travel agent do NOT use Himalayan Glacier. They were hideously expensive and set me up with one of the worst travel guides I've ever had. He was lazy, sleazy and dishonest.

In Kathmandu, if you're looking for a travel agent do NOT use Himalayan Trail Finder. I booked my trip to Chitwan National Park through them and they failed to pick me up, not once, but twice!

If you're looking for a place to stay in Chitwan National Park, do NOT go to Island Jungle Resort. I wrote a lengthy post about it in which I called "the world's most remote tourist trap."

In Pokhara, I highly recommend paragliding, but do NOT use the Blue Sky company. I wrote a post about how my pilot screwed up and I only got about half the time I paid for and all they offered me by way of "apology" was a free t-shirt.

In Pokhara, if you're looking for a guest house, do NOT use Karma Guest House.

If you want further details email me.

Pokhara

I'm in Pokhara now, the other main tourist hub in Nepal. I'm in the tourist area, called Lakeside, and I like it so much more than Kathmandu. It's a lot more relaxed and the setting is beautiful. Just outside my room there's a rooftop patio from which I have a great view of the Annapurna Massif. The massif is a wall of peaks, including some of the most famous mountains in the world.



On the right is Machhaphuchhare (6,993 meters), the famous "fish tail mountain". The mountain is sacred to the Hindus and thus climbing it is forbidden. Now I can say I've seen Machhaphuchhare and Machu Picchu, although I can't say it quickly!

There are five peaks named Annapurna. On the left is Annapurna South. In the center is Sarangkot, the hill from which the paragliders take off.

The Massif is so, well, massive, that no matter where you look here you see the mountains. This is main street in Lakeside with Machhaphuchhare looming over.




I went up to watch the sunrise from the Pagoda. It was a little cloudy, so the views were a bit disappointing. Here's a view of Pokhara, the lake and the massif in the early morning light.



I went back up again with two girls I met rafting, Israeli sisters named Michal (left) and Ricky (right). I think the view was better the second time...



And this is the stupa itself.



The helipad cracks me up. This is a Buddhist monument, after all. The First Noble Truth of Buddhism usually is translated "life is suffering". But I guess that doesn't mean that if you're a rich tourist that you should have to "suffer" to walk or take a taxi to the top.

Paragliding

A few days ago I went paragliding, which is where you jump off a hill with a parachute on your back and hope it opens. It's quite exhilarating and relaxing at the same time. You float on thermals, columns of warm air, the way birds do.

Since I don't actually know how to do any of this I went tandem, with a "pilot", who tried to show off, but ended up taking a wrong turn, so we had to land early. It was fun while it lasted. I highly recommend it, but do NOT go with the Blue Sky company in Pokhara.

(We were supposed to land on the other side of the lake and have a van drive us back to town. We landed on the wrong side, so I walked up to the office. I calmly pointed out that I was supposed to have been in the air for 30-40 minutes and got about half that. She asked where the rest of my group was so I pulled her outside, pointed to them way up in the air and said, "Up there!" They offered me a free t-shirt...)

I took a cheap disposable camera because I didn't want to spend the rest of the day looking for my digital camera after I dropped it a few thousand feet. So the picture quality is even worse than usual, but you get the idea.

Here I am with the Annapurna Massif in the background.



And this is the view looking down on Pokhara.



This is what it looks like from the other side of the lake, from a Buddhist monument called the Peace Pagoda. I wasn't fortunate enough to get as high as this guy, the tiny dot in the middle of the big cloud.

Short update

I'm in Pokhara now, the other main tourist hub of Nepal. Internet cafes are more expensive here than in Kathmandu but much slower, so this will be a short post with no pix.

Since my last post I spent a few days in Chitwan National Park. I got to ride and "help" bathe an elephant but other than that it was the World's Most Remote Tourist Trap.

From there I took a bus to Pokhara, the starting point for hikes in the Annapurna region, which is actually more popular than the Everest region because of the relatively lower altitude.

Today I went paragliding. Tomorrow I leave for a three-day rafting tour on the Kali Gandaki river.

Fun stuff to report as soon as I can get a decent connection. It's funny I spoiled I've become. These computers don't have iTunes installed? I'm outta here!