Introduction
So there I was, munching on a below average Aloo Paratha accompanied by a fantastic espresso coffee. I was gazing out of the cafe's open air courtyard toward a quiet street bathed in sweet early morning mountain sunshine. A man with a blue face, covered as he was in tattoos, nonchalantly strolled in, flipped through the menu and took a seat on the opposite side of the restaurant. The waiter barely looked twice.
There are few locations in the world where a scene like this might play out. It had to be easily (but not too easily) accessible, be surrounded by attractions favoured by younger travellers, and have a local populace not averse to catering to the weird and varied needs of cashed up western tourists. Pokhara, in central Nepal was one such place.
Welcome to my 8th trip report in which I document my flight back from this lakeside tourist paradise to Nepal's marginally-less-lakeside capital, Kathmandu.
A few pictures of Pokhara to set the scene:
Pokhara's Lake just before sunset. These clouds never really cleared in my time there, I was told that there were many more mountains to be gazed at.
Me admiring the view from the top of the Kalki Ganga mountain range which overlooks Pokhara. To get here took 6 hours of uphill mountain biking which, truth be told, took the form of mountain bike pushing more often than not.
And when the rain inevitably came in every afternoon, there was no shortage of cafes with every creature comfort imaginable in which to pass the time.
I spent two nights and three days in Pokhara and barely got a sense of what this place was about. A friend I made on the bus from Kathmandu (that's right, I caught a bus) was returning to Pokhara after a 3 month absence. He was not surprised that he recognised most of the travellers wandering around from his previous time there - they, on the other hand, had never left. And probably never would.
Looking around on the morning of my flight I could see myself doing a long stint here - it is quite possibly the easiest place ever to be a tourist. But then I came to my senses and figured out that if I stayed in one place for a long time, that time would not be spent travelling by airplane. And what's the fun in that?