POKHARA

MACHAPUCHERE FROM MY ROOF

BACK TO THE PAST

After 32-years I arrive back in Pokhara.  There is little for me to remember about my last trip here as I came with an Irish teacher called Willie and as far as I remember we visited the campus where he taught and did little else.

I've been asked a few times if I see any changes in the town but the reply is मेरो याद चैन or I don't remember.  

I get here on the Golden Travels bus which is surprisingly comfortable and the journey doesn't seem like the 6-hours it takes.  We arrive at Druba's - our host who we knew in Edinburgh - at about 3 pm and meet his wife and grandson who stay with the family, have a natter about old times, eat and sleep.

OUR LUXURY BUS

Next day we visit the lakeside - फेवा ताल  (Fewa Tal) and are pretty amazed at the feeling that one is not in Nepal but at the highly commercialised end of a loch in a Scottish Highand glen.

We take a taxi to the lakeside.  After we have dutifully over-paid by the usual Rs50 or Rs60, we wander around the lake and the main drag.  Lakeside is strictly tourist-ville and so unlike the Nepal you get used to.  

Here are shops after shops selling cast-offs from tourists:  hiking boots, windproof jackets, rucksacks, ice picks, helmets, torches and all the rest of the paraphernalia that climbers and trekkers seem to need. North Face has the monopoly.  Most of the stuff seems brand new. Westerners, especially Germans, seem to over-estimate their needs and arrive over-prepared with the latest in all the gear.  You can tell they’ve probably been on the internet to assess the best on the market from the reviews.  And while they struggle heavily laden like ancient tortoises up and down slopes, the Nepalese bound on ahead with a heavy rucksack and wearing Chinese sand shoes bought on the market for a couple of quid.

Again, that khaana that’s given to foreigners most of whom have never tasted the vast array of  that’s available.  We enter a Thakali restaurant, famous for their expertise in preparing authentic local dishes, and instead of Tibetan thukpa – a spiced soup with broad, flat noodles – we’re served an oily concoction with half a runner bean cooked in noodles you get in a packet with little inserts containing msg and other poisons.

Nevertheless, Pokhara has a lot going for it.  Ostensibly a beautiful and historic city, you never really feel you’re in Nepal.  The wide streets and the sparse traffic and the children and women with light brown skins give the streets a Portuguese ambience and you would expect to hear fado from the café doorways and see people sitting around tables on a verandah playing cards and drinking amaretto.  People are friendly and they all seem to know each other in passing.  (You could also imagine yourself in the Gorbals slums with sunshine.)

Later, the rain comes down, heavy rain falling in cold needles from the sky making wine glasses on the ground.

We sidle into another restaurant, Marawadi vegetarian, the only one we’ve seen in the town, and have “breakfast.  Later, we pass another dark restaurant set at the back of an untidy courtyard with a fire inside, and we’re cold.  In we go for a weak cup of Tokla tea.  Everyone here seems stoned, I say to a boy who’s serving.

A stupid grin in return tells me that everyone is stoned.  And they all seem to be doing strange things:  one boy drums on a bongo, an infantile rhythm; a foreigner of indeterminate age and origin, well-dressed in un-dyed Nepalese khadi jacket and trousers, pushes a log further into the fire with such meticulous care that he can’t be other than tripping.  What he sees in the fire we will never know.  Others sit around cross-legged and watch with blank stares.  At some of the tables at the edge of the restaurant are foreigners who look as if they have reached the end of their budget and talk and loudly welcome newcomers to the tables as if they’ve know them all the way from Kerala through Goa bouncing off Rishikesh like a pin ball and landing in Pokhara till they are ejected to the next watering hole where again they’re meet other dharma bums.

We head back to the main drag and catch a taxi back to Sital Devi where we’re staying.  The area is very peaceful with the constant sound of rushing water in the middle of the street, the Seti River canalised with steel mesh over the top.  Motorbikes and scooter careen up and down either side.

The view of the mountains cannot be described.  To communicate their beauty would require a whole new vocabulary.  Their height and majesty always surprise.  Although Machapucheri is so many kilometres distant, they still seem so near.  They are foreboding and I can’t think why anyone would want to climb them the deep valleys and steep glaciers seems so to alien to our western culture.

DRUBA, OUR HOST