The Wandering Chocoholic

Pokhara, Nepal

Greetings from Pokhara, Nepal’s second largest city on the edge of the Annapurna Mountain Range, a sub-range of the Himalayas. It’s cooler here, with fresh mountain air that feels great to breathe. No snow like at home, mind you. But still, mountains and lakes are my kind of scenery, and I feel happy and at peace here. Pokhara is my kind of city. In fact, Nepal is very much my kind of country.

Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!

Another early morning today; are there any other kind on tour? After breakfast at the homestay (banana pancakes, yum), we packed up the purple bus and proceeded to hit the road. Today’s destination: Pokhara.

Adi had warned that the roads between Chitwan and Pokhara were very poor. While the distance was minimal — only about 160km — we were told it would take us up to 6 hours to arrive. How could this be? Well, we’d find out soon enough.

The drive started off well enough. But as we wound northwest, the road conditions started to deteriorate significantly. We climbed higher and higher on winding mountain pass roads, harrowingly close to dramatic drop-offs on one side and giant rocks on the other. And the roads were in terrible shape: They were under a lot of construction, with long rocky, bumpy stretches where I was terrified that the bus would go over the cliff.

It was a bit hair-raising at times, and frustratingly slow for a good part of it. And I admit that Nepal’s staggeringly high road accident rate is at the back of my mind. Two of Kajia’s friends were here for all of 24 hours before getting into a bus accident last week and having to be flown back to Canada. Luckily, our driver is very good, and we had no incidents more serious than a few bumps here and there. Travelling by bus in Nepal is an adventure, that’s for sure.

We made a few stops along the way. First was a quick stop near a small village that was connected to the other side of the valley via a long metal footbridge. We walked across it to snap some photos. Before the advent of the footbridge — a recent government project — the locals had strung up a basket and pulley system. Hard to imagine living like that.

Next was an unscheduled stop when the traffic came to a miles-long halt. Like yesterday, we weren’t entirely sure what the reason was. But there was nowhere to go, so out came the deck of Uno, and we also made friends with some local kids and puppies. It turned out the stoppage was due to either a landslide up ahead, or road construction, or both. In any case, we got moving again after about twenty minutes or so, and made it past the site of the incident with no issues.

We also had a quick coffee stop about an hour outside of Pokhara. The Himalayan Coffee chain seems to be Nepal’s answer to Starbucks; coffee there costs at least ten times what we’d been paying for roadside chai, but it’s billed as organic and fair trade, and it’s really, really good. You know you’re back on the tourist trail when… but hey, no complaints here. We made friends at the coffee stop with a mom and little kid from Pokhara who were on their way to Chitwan for a family wedding.

Momos with the Sisterhood of Survivors

For lunch, we stopped off to visit the Sisterhood of Survivors Project. SoS is one of the projects that G Adventures supports though its Planeterra foundation. It’s a division of SASANE, a women’s project founded to support survivors of human trafficking by providing them with education, job training and employment opportunities. Women who have at least a high school education are given the opportunity to become paralegals and therefore help other victims of trafficking. Other women and girls are provided with training to work in Nepal’s burgeoning tourism industry. They also run a lunch program, which helps raise money to fund the project.

Human trafficking is unfortunately a big problem in Nepal. Many vulnerable women and girls, often from poorer rural areas without access to education or opportunity, are forced, manipulated or conned into exploitation or horrific abuses. Worldwide, it’s estimated that there are over 20 million victims of human trafficking at any given time, and it’s the second-highest moneymaking activity for organized crime after weapons trafficking — higher even than the drug trade. Projects like SoS give these women a way out, and help to prevent re-trafficking.

The lunch stop was fun and interesting. All the women working there are survivors, and they greeted us like old friends and welcomed us into the restaurant. We got a bit of a cooking workshop where we learned how to make momos, and we ate a lot of food and watched a presentation about the project. By the way, if you want to learn more about or support this remarkable organization, visit SASANE’s website.

Welcome to the tourist trail

After lunch, we headed back into the centre of town to our hotel. Pokhara is the second largest city in Nepal, and a lakeside town, far enough from the earthquake’s epicenter to have suffered very little damage. I’ve been waiting since I arrived in Nepal to see the mountains, and here we are, right on the edge of the Annapurna range.

We’re staying in the part of Pokhara known as lakeside. It’s a classic tourist town; shops, cafes, restaurants, cafes can all be found here in abundance. Every second building seems to be a tour operator or adventure sport provider. There’s a ton of fake North Face, fake jewelry, fake pashminas and silk… well, you get the idea. Everyone here has recently completed a trek, is about to go trekking, or is somehow related to trekking. Well, with the exception of yours truly, anyway. My longest trek is likely to be to the pub.

After settling in, we walked down to the lake, which is basically a block away, for a few photos. Then it was time for shopping! I haven’t done much souvenir-type shopping since I arrived on this trip, but Pokhara is the perfect place to make up for that. After stopping at an ATM for cash — I’m spending it faster than expected, but what can you do? — we browsed in the shops. I negotiated with the shop owners and made a few small purchases. Nothing major, but it felt good to be somewhere I could just wander around, browse and shop without getting harassed.

We got dinner from a falafel street stand — there are a ton of Israelis in Pokhara, and even Hebrew on some of the signs. Then a few of us went to the Irish Pub (it’s called, prosaically enough, “Irish Pub”) for a couple of rounds. We have to be up before sunrise tomorrow, so we didn’t stay out too late. But it was fun to just chill out and relax. This is what being on vacation is all about.

We’ll be here until Thursday. More soon!