The Final Blog! Trekking in Pokhara. Oh and some paragliding

By the end of the LRTT course the team was exhausted! They had all put so much effort into the normal course and more so as they planned and tailored it to how they thought the Teach For Nepal Fellows would benefit the most.

On our last night in Kathmandu, we visited a stone-baked pizza restaurant and ate until we felt ill. The food was lovely and exactly what Kay had been dreaming of since she arrived in Nepal.

Early on Thursday morning, we got up and jumped in taxis to the bus station. It was the day we were travelling to Pokhara so everyone was super excited! Most Nepali people ask if you have visited Pokhara within five minutes of starting a conversation with you so we knew that it was somewhere special.

The ten hour plus bus journey was not that special. It was sweaty, sleepy and bumpy. As we were rolling into Pokhara, we saw the whole of the Annapurna range; a series of snowy mountains that stretched across the horizon with Annapurna itself sat in the middle at over 8000m (One of the tallest mountains in the world!).

A friendly face greeted us off the bus. We saw Hom as friendly because he looked and behaved just like his older brother, Sree, who organised our tour of Chitwan National Park. Hom took us to Hotel Crystal Palace, where we were staying and ran through our weekend’s itinerary. The group were overjoyed with the views of Annapurna from their hotel balconies but even more overjoyed at having a hot shower after three weeks of cold ones.

 

Dinner was another lovely experience. Pokhara is sat on the edge of a lake and Lakside is the touristy strip along one edge of this lake. Hom took us to a restaurant on the edge of the lake just as the sun was setting. Cocktails and thali (Nepali meal) were on the menu, as was a traditional Nepalese dance and all this was in the garden of a place that overlooked a starry sky reflected off the lake.

On Friday, we woke up to start our two day trek. As we travelled out of Pokhara, the views became even better- cloudy ravines, snow-capped mountains- but the cloud quickly moved in and one hour into our hike, we were walking through wispy vapour from the incoming bad weather. The trek that we signed up for quickly turned into a gentle walk in the rain and made everyone reminisce about the Lake District. By early afternoon, we had found our hotel for the night. We soon found the bar and had a heated game of mafia and “Whose squinting eye is this?”

 

Somehow, Kay persuaded everyone to get up at 4.30am to see the sunrise over the Himalayas. Sadly the clouds beat us to it so we didn’t see anything! Dan, Clare R. and Nazia stayed out to run round the forest catching leeches in their socks whilst the rest of us went back to bed.

Later that morning, the rain still did not subside so we put on our North Fake waterproofs and trudged our leechy way down the hillside in surprisingly good spirits! My Nepalese leech count ended on this day at 16.

Back in Pokhara we had time to kill so I got a cut-throat razor shave (leaving the moustache of course) then we all cycled round the lake in search of the best sunset, beer-in-hand view. The cycle back was pretty exciting, Rich was pretending he was in the Tour de France and Dan tried to pull off a backflip down a ledge but miss-timing sent him over the handle bars.

Most people ate fajitas at dinner that night and we stood on the balcony, linked arms and serenaded the restaurant to end the night. On the walk home, the monsoon really hit. We were soaked in seconds and the roads became rivers. Dan became an eight-year old and ran around jumping off curbs into these puddles/rivers.

 

Sunday was our final day in Pokhara. Most people left for Kathmandu at 7am as the had to collect tailored clothes. Dan and I decided to stay for the morning so we quickly went down to the lake and hired a boat. Before 9am, we were back-flipping off the boat in the middle of the lake with views of the Annapurna range in the distance.

 

Perched on a hill at the lake’s edge was the Japanese Peace Pagoda. The steps up were exhausting but there was a dense blanket of calm at the top. The garden around the pagoda was lovely and the pagoda itself was bright white with four gold Buddha statues in each side.

At lunch, we got the call we had been hoping for all weekend- paragliding was on! After a quick snack we rode through Lakeside on the back of Hom’s motorbike to the paragliding office. We signed our lives away then jumped into a pick-up with the other thrill seekers to the top of a mountain. The mountain was 1700m high and the place we would be jumping off. Each corner in the pick-up made me that bit more anxious, excited and scared but I kept chatting and reminding myself to stop thinking.

At the launch site, we had no time to stop. I was assigned the owner of the centre, Jochen, as my pilot and he clipped me into his harness and drilled me on take-off. In reality, I had no time to be nervous but watching the other paragliders in the air and staring at the cliff we were about to run down did not help. Finally, the right gust of wind came and we stepped forward. The kite rose above our heads. It pulled us back one step. Then we ran. After only three steps I was being pulled up and away from the cliff. Initially we dipped slightly and I thought we were going to drop but then we rushed forward, clearing the tree tops. I settled back in the seat and felt so comfortable and serene.

The first thermal we caught rushed up past my face and we were already above the launch site. Jochen had a GoPro camera and was really enthusiastic about me lying back and spreading my arms to pose for pictures. I was terrified of doing this and went through waves of realising I was 2000m high. The mantra of “Don’t think,” came in handy. We were lucky enough to catch two more thermals and found ourselves in the clouds. This part was completely surreal but also the scariest part. We couldn’t see more than 2m ahead of us!

25 mintues after take-off, we were flying over Pokhara Lake and Jochen said in my ear, “We are going to do some acrobatics. If the is anything you don’t like, just say stop.”

We took one big swing to the left then went spiralling down to the right. All I could see was the lake screaming towards my face! Finally we stopped, about 20m from the lake and flying in wide loops to wait for a clear landing patch. Dan landed soon after me and we were buzzing with adrenaline.

Thanks for reading the blog posts. This LRTT trip has been an experience of a life-time for all of us. Please keep in touch with LRTT about future trips (www.llrt.org).