On a journey that involves 18 flights, you rely upon them heavily to get you to B, in a timely manner, so that you can get on with the itinerary. Our flight to Pokhara is a mere 80 miles, covered in 25 minutes, as the road journey is 6 hours to do 200kms. However, arriving at the domestic terminal at 7.30am things soon start to unravel. There is heavy rain at Pokhara and all flights are delayed. An 8.00 update, becomes 9.00, and then 10.00. We are without a ‘phone that works in Nepal, the WiFi system at the airport has gone down and no one can help. We are trying to reach our tour guide, do we bail, hang fire, what next?
I go back through the terminal and get to the airline to send an email. When I get back in to the departure lounge, Angelka is impersonating a windmill at the gate, the ‘plane is boarding!
We get to Pokhara nearly two hours late but, we are still be able to get back on track of the itinerary. We have a celebrity on our flight who emerges from the flight to a welcome committee and is festooned in marigold garlands.
We meet our guide, get in a taxi and head for the hills. We see our first mountain tops, despite the cloudy, grey skies. Kanchha, our guide, shows us a video of the torrential rain that was the reason for our delay, biblical!
Our taxi takes us to our starting point where we have lunch. On the way we see an eagle, another circling our starting point.
The hike wasn’t difficult, we started higher up because of the delay. Apart from getting a sweat on, we trailed our guide whose experience is many years. When we arrived at our overnight stay, I still thought we had an hour to go. We sat out in the garden, gazing at the Himilayas, as one by one, they slowly revealed themselves with startling clarity. A group of Australians, on their third trip here, said you only see glimpses and this was the first time they’d seen a whole mountain, here we were with four. I cannot load the pictures for a few days, we are on the top of a mountain with nothing but, the bare essentials. The mountains have mesmerized us for three hours as the sun dips to a position now, with dusk about to yield to night and each glimpse is a privilege!