Pokhara, Nepal

After this shaking ride we arrived at the Pokhara busstand. A taxi gave us a sign that he knew a nice and cheap hotel so we simply let him drive us along the lakeside to show the place. We agreed that the hotel, Lotus Inn Hotel, was well located and luxury for a good price. Pokhara Lakeside is very touristic and mainly one long souvenir-shoppingstreet with restaurants, bars, bakeries and fruitstalls.

Lakeside bazar

Cutest shop ever

Our hotel is back away from the mainbazar on a quiet spot, eventhough it's surrounded by other hotels. We are a one minute walk away from the beautiful Phewa Tal (the lake) and close to Basundhara Park where we spend time in the sun reading and staring at little boats, children swimming and men taking their daily bath (including lots of foamy soap).

The weather has changed a little to half days of sun and half days of rain. Still it is around 35 degrees and doesn' t cool down so much at night.

 Summer in the city...

When the sky is clear we have a most awesome snowy Himalaya view from our rooftop on the famous mountains of Annapurna Range.

 View from our rooftop

Jaakko decided to have some permanent bodyart and so we spent a few days sketching and visiting Hari Gurung at his Skin Art Tattoo Studio.

 The first!

Meanwhile I bought some other bodyart in the shape of Tibetian jewelry. In the streets are many Tibetian women, friendly asking where you are from and then telling you their story about how they crossed the border of Nepal by foot years ago and now make and sell their handmade beads, chains and bracelets. They are made from yak- or deerhorns, iron, silver, semiprecious stones or plastic, dried pits and seeds from trees etc.

     
One day Jaakko felt like riding a bike and rented one. He spent the whole day bicycling around  visiting Old Pokhara (to see how the town used to be before tourists took over) and The Natural History Museum.

The lake keeps attrackting us as from midday untill the sun sets the views are unbelieveble. Trees standing on the shore accompanied by their many foresty friends close to eachother all the way up to high on the mountaintops. Mountains, after mountains, after mountains...in the sun, in the rain, pink skies, grey skies, it keeps amazing me how surreal it looks and at the same time it is so real.

So with the nice surroundings and clean air we stayed longer than planned before heading to final stop Kathmandu.

Lucky us leaving on June 9th!

Siddhartha Hwy, Nepal

A taxi-jeep drove us to the neighbouring village where we were promised a bus to Pokhara. An overcrowded bus, said to be the only one that day, made us (quite much forced) climb on the roof joining the luggage of others.

It was a very exciting, bumpy, windy, quite scary ride with amazing views. Though bouncing for 5 hours on top of a bus speeding over Siddhartha Highway simulated a little too much a one-way rollercoaster-ride with a chance on traffic in the opposite direction...

 The two-way-traffic road

 

Ricefields

Busstop on Siddhartha Highway

Tansen (Palpa), The Terai

We had nice small local busses from Lumbini to Bhairawa, change and to Butwal and third change before getting a bus to Tansen. The busses varied from crowded to overloaded; our last bus was small and filled with people, sad boxes full of chirping chicks, some goats and enormous bags of salesmen-stock. The aisle between the seats had a one meter thick layer of ricesacks, and over them dozens of people squatting - we were lucky ones with our seats.

Tansen is a pretty mountain town mostly covered by clouds. It felt really good to leave behind the boiling weather of Lumbini. Though walking up and down the steep streets make you sweat anyway.
We first settled into Hotel The Bajra but a did a quick checkout after making closer contact with bedbugs and a body full of bites.

Our next stop was White Lake hotel, which was luxurious with backup electricity and wifi in their lobby. On our stay there we also wittnessed a Nepali wedding which is a day for women to excessively dress up in their most beautiful sari (preferably shining with gold), jewelry and make up.

Wedding crowd

All around Tansen is mountains and forest so it is also an idealic place for walks.

Tansen seen from Shreenagar Danda

Tansen used to be a capital of the Magar kingdom and has been semi-independent until 1950's. You can still find a lot of ancient paved paths crossing around the mountains under leaves and plants. In the city is also the house of the former (local) king. It has a four meter high gate so that he could ride out every morning on his elephant to check his subjects.

A nice thing was the small sweetshops and vegetarian local foodplaces. We mainly ate Daal Bhaat (all-you-can-eat rice, lentils and spicy veggies) as evening meal and had 30 cent chowmein (veg fried noodles) and snacks for lunch. They sell lots of veggies deepfried in gram flour, like onion/coleslaw balls, vadai (donut) and samosas (spiced potato). In India we already witnessed the sweet tooth of the people and here again the glace broke from our teeth tasting syrup doughballs, halwa and barfi (nut- and milkfudge).

We also got the first experiences of the future - there were a few thunder/rainstorms blasting at nights, ripping literally the roofs of shacks around us. We cosily watched it all happen from behind our window; the streets became rivers, trees wildly shaked all blossom out of their heads and the sky behind the mountain flashed beautifully from black to white. The monsoon (rainseason) scheduled for starting in June is getting closer.

A slight inconvenience has been strikes - there is a general strike from Maoists around Nepal. This means that the only most couragious kiosks and restaurants are staying open with police and hotels. This is also concerning public transport so we needed some luck with our next planned bustrip to Pokhara.

Lumbini, The Terai

Our next stop was Lumbini, the birthplace of Gautama Siddhartha Buddha. We had rattling local busses, first from Sauraha to Bhairawa and from there to Lumbini.

The village is two busstops, a parking lot and a street with hotels but it also has a very important religious site; a Buddhist pilgrimspark. We stepped out at "Main Bazar" and settled down in Lumbini Guest House. Chitwan had been hot but somehow Lumbini managed to top it with daily temperatures rising over +40 degrees in the shade. A bit exhausting as there is electricity for ceilingfans only a few hours per day.

Another ¨enlightened¨ one

Lumbini used to have numerous ancient monastries and stupa's but unfortunately they have also been destroyed a few times. You can still find some ruins from as early as year 300 B.C. but one needs a lot of imagination to recreate the towns glorydays.

The bricks of "Maya Devi Temple" have been sealed under a protective dome as it is supposed to be the exact place where Maya Devi gave birth to Gautama Siddhartha in 563 B.C.

Maya Devi Temple and bath

Other attractions in the "park" are numerous monastries recently built by other Buddhist countries, blooming flower trees, a pond with tortoises and meditationplatforms in the sacred garden and souvinier sellers overloaded with religious items like strings of prayerbeads from the sacred Bodhi-tree.

Bodhi-tree

We took a nice walk through the sacred garden and sat down near an enormous Bodhi-tree, hanged full with prayerflags, where a very young girl was meditating, doing prayers and blessing other devotees. This sacred tree is the kind under which Siddhartha became the Buddha (The enlightened one) after 49 days of meditation.

It 's funny to see that also Hindus come here to do their puja (offer and prayer) as they believe Buddha was an incarnation of Vishnu and they worship Maya Devi as a Mother Goddess.

After the walk we had a two hour bicyclerickshaw ride to see most of the temples.

 Spinning the prayers silently into air