Down to Earth

The morning after we returned, the first thing that Matt did was pop off to the local barbershop for a proper shave. Matt had tried one of these before and had loved it so had promised himself one on our return to civilisation. I decided to accompany him as I was curious about what exactly it involved....

Followed by a close shave and then more foam and another shave

Not forgetting under the nose

Followed by a rub of a cooling agent

A spritz of refreshing cologne

A head and face massage

And a final snip of the nose hairs

If I was a man I would have definitely had one too!

Instead of putting our feet up, like Matt had decided to do (sensible boy), Ella and I decided to do some sightseeing! Sitting on a narrow ridge above the Phewa Tal (lake) in Pokhara is the brilliant-white World Peace Pagoda. It was constructed by Buddhist monks from the Japanese Nipponzan Myohoji organisation to promote world peace and is across the lake from Lakeside (where we stay in Pokhara) and up a hill.

After quite a lot of haggling we managed to secure a boat for the afternoon and paid a discounted fee as we would be rowing the boat ourselves. Unfortunately they only give one oar so I found it a little tricky to keep the boat straight.


The measly 45 minute walk up to the Pagoda was actually quite a bit harder than we expected! It seemed our legs weren’t up for much action but we decided we could be excused after what we had just done so we kept on walking and made it in 40 minutes. We got some good views of Pokhara below us.

We decided to relax for half an hour on the grass under the glorious sunshine before taking a walk around the Pagoda,


and then walked down again (this time making it in a speedy 20 minutes!).

As we have now been back a few days, we have also been to the local restaurant down the road for some Daal Bhaat to compare it to what we had in the mountains. It was not only much cheaper (prices increase the higher up you go in the mountains for obvious reasons and can be more than 4 times the cost in Pokhara), it was tastier too. The thing about Daal Bhaat is that you pay once but can have your plate refilled with more veg, rice and lentils until you burst! We have managed a small second portion sometimes because the original portions are normally quite big and it is really filling, but this time we didn’t even manage that!

We also ordered a local dish pronounced ‘Suk-o-tee’ which consists of small chunks of cured buffalo meat fried with onions, chilli and tomato. I am sure it’s very bad for the arteries but it is delicious and it was good to eat meat again after being vegetarian for the time we were on the trek. All washed down with some cold local beer of course. Nice.

We are hoping to leave Pokhara very soon as it is quite a lot more expensive than we thought it was going to be (I guess that’s what happens when it’s tourist hotspot even though it is supposed to be the poorest country in the world) and it is very easy to spend here. The choices are to go straight back into India or to go via the Royal Chitwan National Park (on the way to India) for some wildlife action... We have yet to decide.