Pokhara, Part 1

Given my short time in Nepal (not enough for a true trek), I was encouraged to take a long weekend in Pokhara, a mountain lake town 89mi east of KTM. It's the seat for many other Himalayan trekking routes, including the Annapurna circuit, so has some sweet views. 89mi sounds close, but when the only road you have is 1.5 lanes wide, winds through canyons and hills and is sporadically eroded by yearly monsoons, it takes about 7hrs. I was ready for a whirlwind weekend, & promptly got crackin'.

There was a lot I wanted to see, & I wanted to stretch my legs & save money where I could, so I rented a mountain bike (plus helmet, of course) to get around town. "Mountain bike" may be an exaggeration. Most of them don't have suspension, just fatty tires, and even the ones that do could use some major tuning up & grease. Regardless, it got me a decent amount of places and saved me some cab fare. Plus exercised the part of my brain that's not used to driving on the left side of the road.

First stop was Devi Falls, which is connected to a cave and had some cool geologic features.

The weather was kinda overcast & rainy, so, much like in the Pacific NW, the mountains weren't "out." I decided to hit up the International Mountain Museum for my fix. This was a collaboration between the Nepal Mountaineering Association and other countries to preserve the Himalayan environment and educate visitors on mountain cultures, mountain geology and Himalayan mountaineering. The entrance includes a climbing wall and an outdoor shrine to mountaineers who lost their lives.

Inside, there are a number of exhibits, including one on the environmental impact of climbing Everest, with loads of O2 bottles, fuel canisters, etc left behind & later brought down by kind souls:

By the time I had biked back from the museum, my sub-par bike saddle was giving me grief in my lady parts, and it was so humid, I was losing body water just standing around. Time to ditch the bike for the day.

The afternoon was something to which I'd been looking forward for a long time: I spared my dehydrated biking muscles and took a taxi to Choeling Gompa, a Tibetan monastery within Tashi Palkhel, a Tibetan refugee camp on the outskirts of town. Knowing that the Tibet about which I had studied in college no longer really exists, this was the closest I would come to it on this trip.

Auspiciously, it turned out to be the anniversary of Buddha's Enlightenment, so a special puja (ritual ceremony) was being held by the monks. I was immediately immersed in greetings of "Tashi delek" (~"blessings & good luck"), visions of brightly colored prayer flags and spinning prayer wheels, the scent of burning incense, and the sound of horns and the "om mani padme hum" mantra being chanted. Even though it had been 15 years since my year-long course on Tibet, everything about this place felt familiar, and somehow soulfully comforting. For the full photo album, see here: http://tinyurl.com/oo7e2fa

Many of the older refugees have been here since the camp was established around 1967; others were born here, including Joenin, the monk who sold me my meditation bowl. We talked about the Dalai Lama and how he hoped to meet His Holiness one day. "One time is enough. Just to get a blessing." 

It goes without saying how disheartening the aftermath of the Chinese invasion of the Tibetan theocracy is. While it is no doubt difficult to be separated from their leader, Tibetans always seem to have an appropriately Buddhist attitude about this, in that they don't dwell on the tragedy but accept impermanence and that karma will work things out. Enough said.