Pokhara by bus

Day 3 - Kathmandu-Pokhara

Up at 5:30am for early breakfast and 7am departure.  We're off to Pokhara, 200km away, by bus. It's going to take 8 hours.

This time we were on a public 'luxury' bus, sharing with other foreigners and more well-to-do locals. The first part of the journey, through Kathmandu and over and down a steep descent out of the Kathmandu valley, went nice and quickly. Often you're stuck for ages here with breakdowns and traffic jams. The bus was pretty comfy - it's a stretch to call it 'luxury' but it was pretty good - and the road and the drivers seemed less insane (or maybe I'm just used to it now).





First food/toilet stop was a town called Malekhu. A cute little market town selling a lot of varieties of deep fried fish, caught from the river just behind the town that we follow most of the way to Pokhara. We wandered around the market but it was too early for lunch.

Malekhu

Fish for sale - great for bus snacks?

Four local girls had got on the bus on the outskirts of Kathmandu, uni students going home, and one of them chatted away to me. She was final year of a medical technology degree, and they were all going home for festival.

She asked me if I wanted something like 'french fries' so I said yes to be polite. Turned out it was 'fish, fried', little sardine sized things she'd bought in Malekhu that had been deep fried whole. You chomped it up bones and all. Quite yummy, and I didn't get sick. I didn't eat the head though.

On the way I could see evidence of money being spent on the road and the infrastructure around it. New houses. Better road conditions. A big electricity pylon run along the other side of the river. A massive new gondola to a temple.

We arrived in Pokhara in good time and checked in to the Grand Holiday Hotel on the same street as where we'd stayed before. Alas it was cloudy so no views yet. Hope it's clear by the end of the trip!

Reading on the hotel roof

Walked along the lake front and Bharat amusingly paid a shoeshine man to polish his crocs. Dinner at Aankhi Jhyal which was great - Euro, Indian, Italian AND Nepali! My Dal Bhat was yummy. Angela's Kadai Paneer was superrb but with one flaw, they used chicken instead of paneer. Angela coped and I got to finish it.

Aakhari Jahyal Dal Bhat

That night though I had another tame nightmare - where I served Angela some salad with mayo from a sachet BUT IT WAS CHICKEN MAYO. In my dream she was like, 'oh well.' I woke up slightly disquieted.