Pokhara

Pokhara

June 2nd

We woke up and left to drive to Pokhara, Nepal's second largest city, early this morning. Google maps said the drive was about 4 hours, but that meant it was closer to 6 because everything in Nepal seems to be +/- 2 hours. The drive was beautiful throughout the hillside and we reached Pokhara around 4 pm to check into our hotel. We explored the city and ate dinner at a western restaurant. The walk back gave us some amazing views of the city's large lake (Fewa Lake) at night and we planned for the adventures of tomorrow (our first free day of the trip).

June 3rd

Today was our first full day in Pokhara and also a free day that we could do anything we wanted. Nick and I decided to wake up early and rent a paddle boat to go out on the lake in the morning. We had a beautiful view of the Himalayas over the hillside from the middle of the lake, which was definitely the highlight of the day. After boating we headed back to our hotel to meet up with another group of students, then we all decided to go to see some caves on the other side of the city. We had to take taxis and city buses to get to and from the caves, but exploring the large caves was worth it. The second cave of the 2 was cool because it had a bunch of bats in it, but the exit to the cave required some intense climbing. Two old Indian women tried to climb up to exit the cave but got stuck near the top, causing quite the traffic jam and everyone was yelling at them in Nepali, which was a pretty stressful situation in a small, dark space. After we made it out and took the bus and taxi back we were exhausted, so we stayed in for a little while and did our laundry as a group. Later at night we went out to dinner in a small group, which was a great and relaxing end to an eventful day.

June 4th
We started our day by driving out to a hotel called the Himalayan Front for breakfast, which had incredible views of the Himalayas which include some of the tallest peaks in the world. After that, we drove to a farming community outside of the city to see their integrative farm. We had to walk about 3.5 miles each way and there were some pretty steep hills and a lot of heat and humidity. Visiting the farm was very interesting, though. They had 50 bee hives for cultivating honey (one of which stung me so that was awful), rice and corn fields, fish ponds, and many goats. All of these aspects worked together to create a sustainable farm: for example, the fish lived in the rice fields (since they used flood irrigation) and the water pools also benefitted the bees to help them pollinate and reproduce. After the long walk back to our bus we went back to the hotel to rest and eat dinner afterwards. All in all, it was a good, but rough day.

June 5th

Today we got to have a later start at 9am, then we drove back to same farming community outside Pokhara that we were at yesterday. We visited a different farm (that we could drive to this time) and learned about their permaculture farm. This farm integrated coffee, pineapples, bananas, and more into a vertical land space that was all organic and pesticide-free, which was very impressive. We also went to a nearby school to pick up trash since it was "World Environment Day," so we also got to interact with some children there. After that we went back to the farm and drank coffee and played cards with our group and another smaller group of young people who had been staying at the farm for a while. One of those people was from Freiburg, Germany, which is an eco-friendly city I have always wanted to go to, so visiting with him today convinced me of my wish to go there even more.