Post haste (kind of) to Pokhara

We had an early start to Pokhara on the Saturday as the tourist bus we were travelling on left at 7.30am but thankfully it wasn't a long walk from where we were staying to the bus stop. Although only about 200km from Kathmandu the road is steep, windy and has lots of potholes so with three stops for the loo and for food the trip took almost 8 hours, including about an hour to get out of Kathmandu. We discovered that the bus leaked quite badly on some passengers when it rained, but as it was full there wasn't a lot they could do.

It was good to get out of Kathmandu but it was quite evident from the smaller towns and villages that we passed through that Nepal is a very poor country. Mukti later told us that about a quarter of the population (roughly 10 million) are working overseas in places like Dubai and India to earn money. This perhaps goes some way to explain why you see a lot of Nepalese women carrying cement for construction work, weeding corn fields, planting rice, etc. Wages are as low as 25 rupee per day up to 500 rupee per day (approx. AU$7) for construction work or being a trekking porter.

Australians complain if they can't water their garden every day but in some areas of Nepal at the end of the dry (before the monsoon sets in) some villages can only have water every fifth day. Also, as a lot of the power is hydro-generated, with little water Kathmandu is generally without power for up to 14 hours a day and Pokhara is slightly better off with around 10 hours of no power.

We were met at the bus depot by another minivan which took us to the Fairmont Guest House. This is a well run (by Prem, a long time friend of Mukti's) and clean guest house and was our place of residence each time we were in Pokhara.

We took a walk around Pokhara and again managed to get Carol a soy latte. While walking we were taken to an outdoor gear shop (owned by (yet another) friend of Mukti's, Mahendra) and scored some great deals on "North Face" and "Arc'teryx" clothing.

Later, while in a bookshop, there were cries of "come and look at this" from Steve who was waiting outside. In the distance we could see some mountains but had no idea what they were! [They were the Annapurna Range but we didn't know which bits we were seeing.]