After the flight delay issues in Delhi, I was finally able to fly over to Nepal. Spent a few days in Kathmandu and then a few days in Pokhara before going on a 5 day trek near Pokhara. I surprisingly loved Kathmandu (thought it would be similar to Varanasi…), Pokhara was great, and the trek was also great…I went to Denver this past June for a weekend but this was really the first time in my life that I saw a legit mountain range and it was awesome. To be honest, my biggest takeaway was the number of Dutch. Literally half of the people I met in both Kathmandu and Pokhara were Dutch.
Kathmandu
On my flight from Delhi to Kathmandu, literally 20% of my flight were old white people dressed as Indiana Jones wannabes – button down travel shirt, travel pants, hiking shoes, travel bucket hat, outdoors vest. I actually had the same outfit packed away in my bag, but was glad to see that I’m already fitting into my demographic of a retired American tourist.
I’ve always had an interest in visiting Nepal after playing Uncharted 2 on the PS3 back in high school. It’s probably the best single player game I’ve ever played. Seeing all the stupas and Buddhist temples in Kathmandu was really cool, and weirdly enough it felt more spiritual up in the mountains. The Hindu temples up here were very colorful and featured exaggerated and animated sculptures of gods and demons. I was also a sucker for those Buddhist prayer flags that you see hung up everywhere, and the Buddhist prayer wheels that you can spin…to be honest, pretty much anything that was prominently featured in Uncharted 2 grabbed my attention.
I definitely wish I had a day or 2 more in Kathmandu (thanks Xi), but overall it’s a great city to spend a couple of days in before going on a trek.
Pokhara/Poon Hill Trek
I took a lovely 9 hour bus ride from Kathmandu to Pokhara (the return was 9.5 hours!) instead of a 1 hour flight…though I saved close to $200 by taking the bus both ways instead of having the roundtrip flight. Pokhara is a nice sleepy resort town, but there’s really not much to do there beyond using it as a base for the Annapurna range treks. Like Agra before it, the best and cheapest food was a solid ~20 minute walk outside of the tourist area (in this case, the lake district). The grimier the place, the spicier, better, and cheaper the food.
I decided to do the Poon Hill trek because I only had ~5 days, and this was supposed to be the best “easy”/beginner trek that still had fantastic views. Despite the unseasonable clouds that partially blocked the views (I’ve had terrible luck with mountains…when I went to Amboselli with my sister last August, the unseasonable clouds there blocked Kilimanjaro). I met a large group of people from the hostel I was in for the trek, and we wound up splitting into two groups since 3 of them were crazy fast trekkers…I went with two Dutch kids and a guy from Arabia.
I could have easily done the trek in 4 days but I got a pretty bad fever on the 4th day, so spent all day in the lodge recovering from that. I read up a bunch on this and can only surmise that all the other travel blog writers were paid by the agencies, because it’s extremely doable to just carry your backpack and follow the trailsigns/other trekkers. It’s a super easy trek to do on your own (I did the last 1.5 days solo when the other 3 in my group broke off for a 2nd trek)…all you need is offline maps (Maps.Me!), and every lodge offers WiFi and chargers for your phones. For a 4 day trek, you can easily do:
Day 1: Nayapul to Uleri
Day 2: Uleri to Ghorepani
Day 3: Ghorepani to Tadapani/Ghandruk
Day 4: Tadapani/Ghandruk to Uleri
I might be skinny but I am woefully out of shape (pretty much the only exercise I have done in the past 12 months was biking close to 100 miles over the course of Burning Man), and while this was certainly a challenging trek, it is pretty straightforward as long as you don’t have knee problems or are morbidly obese. The total cost of this can be done for under 10k Nepali rupees.
The single coolest part of this trip was, despite the clouds, seeing the Himalayas. After living in the plains of Chicago, seeing mountains everywhere is just so god damn cool. And these are legit mountains too…the “hill” that I climbed was ~3200 meters high, which is higher than any peak on the Appalachian range. I can certainly see why Bilbo wanted to leave the Shire to see mountains again.
It’s not easy, but I think it was definitely harder than it should have been because of my incoming fever and the altitude. On the first day we trekked ~6-7 hours, and the first hour was pretty tough as we went straight uphill. The last 1-1.5 hours was super tough, as it was just 2km straight of steps. My shirt was disgustingly drenched after this (was also carrying my travel backpack), and I had to wear this same shirt for the next few days. The 2nd day was a pretty straightforward 4-5 hour trek…the first half of the day was tough as it was more constant streams of steps. On the 3rd day, we did a ~45 minute walk up Poon Hill from Ghorepani which was certainly a bit tough for the sunrise views, before then heading east to Tadapani/Ghandruk. It only dipped to the low 40s up here so it wasn’t too cold. The first half of the trek east (~5-6 hours to Tadapani, and ~2 hours from Tadapani to Ghandruk) was tough and had more uphill climbing, but after that the rest of the trek is downhill. I went to fast on the final day and couldn’t bend my right knee for a few days, but I guess that built character so it was all good.
On day 3, we actually got what I thought was a cooler view than Poon Hill in what was called the Deurali Pass. Unfortunately the clouds blocked a good chunk of it but the view was still straight out of a storybook.
To be honest, the food was thoroughly mediocre throughout all of Nepal (especially compared to China and India) but it was still better than the bland stuff you typically get in the West. But overall, I really enjoyed this trip and am glad that I went. It’s definitely one of those places that will grow more on me the more time passes I think, and I definitely want to return back at some point to see more of Kathmandu and to do another trek.
After this, I came back to Chennai for Diwali. My dad also flew in for this and we’re going to Sri Lanka together. After that, he has to return back to work (I remember when I had to work…), and I’m off to Rajasthan before going to Ladakh with my uncle and aunt for snow leopard tracking.