As part of his new job, Patrick has switched portfolios with his boss in Dhaka. Patrick’s boss will now handle the Bangladesh portfolio while Patrick will be responsible for Nepal. On 11 February (after a two-and-a-half hour flight delay) Patrick went to Kathmandu for a week to take over and introduce himself to his new colleagues. They’d all seen him before (in June 2006), but this was his first visit as the Contracting Officer responsible for their work. It was a busy but very successful week and a good start to his new job.Jennifer came up in the middle of the week to join Patrick for a short vacation. She had planned to visit Kathmandu during the days while Patrick was in the office. As it turned out, the weather didn’t cooperate. It was cold & rainy almost all week – except for the one day when the Kathmandu Valley experienced its first snow in 63 years!
Fortunately the weather changed for the better once we started our vacation in earnest. On Friday we flew from Kathmandu to Pokhara, a town in the center of Nepal, just south of the Annapurna Range of the Himalaya. Our flight was delayed by almost three hours by fog, but the weather was warmer and sunny when we hit the ground in Pokhara. We were met at the airport by a forest green Land Rover Defender, which drove us up to Tiger Mountain Lodge.
Tiger Mountain Lodge was built ten years ago and was the brainchild of a British Army officer and mountaineer who had settled in Nepal. It sits about 40 minutes’ drive and a few thousand feet above the town of Pokhara, with a magnificent view of the Annapurna, including the holy mountain of Machhapuchhre (“Fish-Tail”). We had our own cabin with a lovely view of the valley.
A big thunderstorm rolled through on our first afternoon, so we stayed in our cabin, reading Michael Palin’s Himalaya on a bed with a bedspread made from the same cloth as Buddhist monks’ robes. One of the lodge staff brought us tea and biscuits around 5:00pm (in the middle of the pouring rain!). In the evenings, the lodge has a cocktail hour around a large open fire in the main building, followed by a three-course dinner in the dining room.
Although it sounds – and felt! – very luxurious, the lodge was surprisingly simple. It’s run on an ethos of sustainable tourism and is dedicated to minimizing negative impacts on the local environment and maximizing the benefits to the local community. For example, all of the soap is handmade, herbal soap from Nepal; hot water is available for only two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon (and is supplied by solar power); small kerosene heaters are used for the cabins and are run for only a few hours in the early evening (thus the thick bedspreads!); and almost all of the food served is grown by local producers in the surrounding villages. The staff was all local, with the exception of the General Manager, Marcus, a Brit who’s lived in Nepal for more than 20 years.
On our first full day we went on a seven-hour hike with Ollie and Georgie, two Brits who work in Kathmandu, and our local guide, Hari. Hari has worked at the lodge since it opened and is a master birdwatcher. We lost track of the many different kinds of birds we saw – kingfishers, kites, kestrels, sunbirds, egrets, and many more. We also saw water buffalo (raised for meat, since the Hindus in Nepal don’t eat beef) and even a few macaques prowling the rice paddies for discarded grains.
As part of the hike we went through a Gurung village. The Gurung, one of the ethnic groups of Nepal, form the overwhelming majority of those Nepali men who fight as mercenaries in the British Army in the legendary Gurkha regiments. The selection of the Gurkhas is a brutal test of physical fitness and discipline – there are slots for only 10% of those who apply every year. A Gurkha soldier makes the same take-home salary as a regular British Army soldier, which makes him a rich man back home in Nepal.
The village we visited was almost certainly the beneficiary of one of these soldiers. Everyone we met was extremely welcoming and friendly – pretty surprising, when you think about how often they must get overdressed Western hikers tromping through their front yards!
We sampled some raxsi, their local moonshine. It was remarkably good! (What is it about mountain people and moonshine?) Sadly for us, Hari was the only one who knew to bring an empty bottle, so he took home a fifth for about fifty cents.
The hike wasn’t very strenuous, but we did notice that we hadn’t worn our hiking gear in a couple of years. Of course, we were put to shame by the 70-year-old women striding past us in their plastic flip-flops, and the little kids scampering about in bare feet, just like the proverbial mountain goats. The last half-hour of the hike saw us climb Tiger Mountain on a near-vertical trail, gaining about 1000 feet in 30 minutes. We were all ready for a shower and a soft bed after that!
Two of the other guests at the lodge were a pair of real characters from England, Jenny and Carol. They were both in their sixties, travelling without their husbands for the first time ever, and having a grand time. We had a lot of fun chatting with them over dinner and hearing about their plans to go south to Chitwan National Park, one of our future vacation destinations, to ride elephants and look for rhinos and tigers.
Every morning we woke up to a spectacular view of the Annapurna. Machhapuchhre is the pyramidal mountain (it has a second peak, not visible here, which gives it the name “Fish-Tail”). As it is considered holy, it may not be climbed, and no one is reliably known to have reached its summit. As we watched the morning sun bathe it every morning, it seemed right that it hadn’t been “conquered.” It seemed a privilege just eat breakfast in front of such a beautiful panorama.
On our last day at Tiger Mountain we went for a shorter hike with Hari, passing mostly through villages and the omnipresent, terraced rice paddies that line every slope that gets reliable sunshine. After one last magnificent lunch of Nepali food and a fascinating conversation with Marcus about Nepali politics, we bid a reluctant farewell to the lodge and headed into Pokhara town.
Pokhara is a popular launching point for mountain trekkers. As a result it seems to combine some of the worst aspects of beach towns (the long strip of overpriced souvenir stores and tacky bars) and mountain towns (henna, hemp, etc.). After being overwhelmed by the silent majesty of the Annapura from Tiger Mountain, Pokhara seemed crass and dirty. Still, there’s a beautiful lake there, the second-largest in Nepal, and our room sat right on its edge. After walking around town on our first day there, we spent a lovely morning paddling around an island temple and enjoying the beautiful weather before catching our flight (delayed by two-and-a-half hours) back to Kathmandu.
Back in Kathmandu we stayed at Dwarika’s Hotel, a one-of-a-kind “living museum” and a testament to what a dedicated person can do to make a difference. The hotel is made up of woodwork rescued from demolished old buildings in Kathmandu and set into reproduction brick buildings. Many of the windows, doors, and other wooden pieces are 500 years old or older and represent some of the finest examples of Nepali architectural woodcarving still in existence. The founder of the hotel didn’t want them in a museum, believing that the sterile environment would definitely kill the tradition of Nepali woodcarving. Instead, he started a hotel to display his treasures and a workshop to teach promising young craftsmen how to restore old pieces and create their own masterworks. You can learn more here: http://www.dwarikas.com/.
On our last day in Kathmandu we roamed around the city together before our flight back (delayed by three-and-a-half hours). Although Kathmandu is poorer per capita than Dhaka and shares many of the worst traits of South Asia (filth, noise, chaos), it’s somehow easier to take than Dhaka. We’re looking forward to many more visits to the city and to the rest of Nepal. Why not come with us sometime? (We promise to keep the snake charmers and Maoists at a distance!)
