Wow – this one turned out to be a hell of a day. We got an early start, hitting the road at 7:00 with Anup and Tanji. Final Destination: Pokhara. Interim Step: Boating a river called the Trisuli, a big water Class III / III+ run that Anup believes is the perfect intro to Nepali whitewater. The run is about halfway between Kathmandu and Pokhara, which in Nepali road terms means 3-3 1/2 hours of some serious driving on what is called a highway but would be a closed fire road anywhere in the States. I won’t bore you, dear reader, waxing lyrical about the river, but let’s just say it is big. Like 14-15′ waves in which rafts disappear from peak to trough big, which is both scary and freaking awesome to a Southeastern boater used to banging off rocks on low volume streams.
Your Blogger hasn’t been in his boat much the past few months, so he was pleased that all but one rapid were straightforward read-and-run wave trains with a few enormous but easily dodgeable holes. In other words, ginormous, but not technical – just the thing to get the blood pumping without requiring me to step it up and bring my B game! The one technical rapid was similar, but a good bit harder due to some crazy cross currents making the hole-dodging amidst 15 foot waves a little more challenging. This one had a bigger drop at the lead in which presented some challenges to the rafts, but it wasn’t really all that tough in a kayak. The Lady deserves the sportsmanship award for the trip, though, as this was pretty terrifying for the rafters and her eyes were the size of dinner plates by the time her boat hit the runoff. All in all, a great river and a spectacular way to see Nepal.
After taking out, we loaded up and hopped in the car for another 3 1/2 hours to Pokhara. Your Blogger is pleased to report that he slept most of the way, despite an impressive array of potholes, ditches, crazy drivers and horns. Once we arrived in Pokhara and checked in, we headed over to a guesthouse/bar owned by yet another of Anup’s good buddies for dinner and drinks. Dinner was ridiculous – a traditional Nepalese feast that Anup tought us to eat in the Nepalese way – by hand. I, of course, enjoyed the hell out of this – especially the fact that the involved pouring lentil soup on top of rice to pick up and slop into one’s mouth. I’m not sure that everyone else at the table was quite as enamoured with the process as I was, so it’s a tribute to Anup’s friend that the food was so good that it as gone within 15 minutes. If you’re ever in Pokhara, I highly recommend Silk Road restaurant and bar, and Sweet Dreams guest house.
We hung around Sweet Dreams for quite a while, kicking back, drinking and having a good time, then hit the streets of Pokhara to check out the various vendors and see if there were any trinkets we needed. Pokhara turned out to be a pretty neat little town, filled with tourist trap bars and ships in a slightly less than annoying kind of way. For some reason Asian tourist towns can pull off a “strip” without making it completely offensive and disheartening in a way we just can’t in the west. really, there isn’t much difference between the main drag in Pokhara and that in, say, Myrtle Beach, but whereas Myrtle Beach makes me want to dig my eyes out of my head with a rusty spoon, Pokhara just made me chuckle and smile at the absurdity of it all. I don’t know if it’s something about the open and honest hustle of Asia in which no one pretends that they’re trying to do anything other than separate you from your money and people are cheerfully direct about it, or if it’s just the fact that if we’re in Asia we’ve flown halfway around the world to get there and subconsciously decide that we might as well just relax and enjoy it, but Pokhara turned out to be a hell of a lot of fun.
It was also a Great Success in the Borat kind of way, as after heading back to our hotel and taking up roost on the rooftop bar, we grew accustomed to the competing bands from the bars on the street until we heard, in the background but clearly audible, a live, crappy but recognizable rendition of Hotel California – the world’s most ubiquitous song. At this point I have lost track of the number of countries in which I’ve heard Hotel California, but when one has heard versions ranging from a flamenco band playing the Gypsy Kings version on the streets of Copenhagen, to an awesome band fronted by two “me so horny”-type Philipinas on a rooftop bar in Saigon, to the traditional Eagles recording in a rooftop bar in Bamako, to a Nepali rock cover on a rooftop bar in Pokhara, one can confidently declare that this is the world’s (or at least the Third World’s) most ubiquitous tune. Why the hell that’s the case I have no idea, but it’s inarguable (although based on cell phone ring tones from Nepali men Hips Don’t Lie has a real shot at overtaking it).
[…] to this century has accomplished. During this entire trip, we did not hear a single rendition of Hotel California. Congratulations, Peru – you have broken a streak well over a decade long! And thus, Dear […]