Tue, May 13 - Kathmandu to Pokhara

A 70 year old Indian man is sitting next to me on the bus to Pokhara. He was a school principal, well read, and is travelling with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and grandson. It's wonderful to see a family unit like this happily travelling together.

The Indian family brought more food than they need and I'm their adopted child for the day, eating the extra apple, mango juice, Indian finger food and whatever else they throw my way. I don't mention that my stomach is still a bit unsettled, I just hope for the best. If worst comes to worst, I'm sitting beside a window (now that I think about it, that works for effluent escaping my mouth, but it makes for a pretty comic scene if I have a repeat of yesterday - I suppose I could paint a passing bus brown???)

The roads are incredible ribbons pinned to the sides of steep hills. At times the road makes a big loop, following a constant elevation contour around a big hill. This allows you to see the road for miles ahead. On one such curve, a long line of Matchbox cars and trucks are lines up in both directions. We encounter the traffic jam ten minutes later. It is caused by a low speed head-on collision, apparentlly without injury. After an hour, our bus creeps by the accident.

One side effect of the roads being either twisty or in poor condition (or both) is that speeds rarely exceed 30mph and are often much lower. I expect this is why no-one bothers with seat belts in Nepal. The same applies for most of India, although Delhi now enforces seat belt laws, but they do see speeds up to 50mph.

All but the very steepest slopes are terraced and everything is lush and green at this time. The entire corridor between Kathmandu and Pokhara is inhabited and heavily cultivated.

We have a short pee break at 9:30AM and my Indian "father" plies me with more food and drink. I hope the dam holds! Back on the bus, he pulls out a deck of cards, spends some sorting through them, then asks me to pick a card from the deck, and without looking at it, ask a personal question about my future. I ask him whether I will marry in the future. As far as I can tell, he has not looked at my hidden card and he has not examined the deck from which it was pulled.

He says, "I knew you were going to ask that, because you drew a heart, didn't you?"

Looking at the card, "You are right."

"The real question is when. The card is a seven. You will make a decision in July, the seventh month."

I ask him how he knew it was the seven of hearts. Is it a special deck full of nothing but the same card? He turns the deck over and I see that all the correct cards are present.

He asks me to repeat the exercise. It looks like he is gently putting one card ahead of others as he proffers them a second time. I very deliberately take one from near the beginning of the deck. He smiles. "Interesting that you would select the same card twice."

I have no idea how he knew, but indeed, I ended up with the seven of hearts a second time... Go figure. For the record, no plans on the books to get married anytime soon, so either he is wrong or something pretty special will happen in the next couple months.

The travel agent in Kathmandu has booked me a really nice hotel. The rooms are well appointed, having toilet, hot water shower, air conditioning and ceiling fan as well as a sitting chair. The grounds are immaculate (I see women cutting the grass by hand each day). There is a beautiful outdoor restaurant and the staff are very friendly and helpful. I ask where is the best place to photograph the surrounding mountains and the desk clerk, Amit, tells me the roof. I take a peak and indeed, it likely is the best place on the valley floor.

I've recovered from yesterday and am feeling in the mood for a G&T. The tourist part of Pokhara is built along the shore of Lake Phew (I never heard the official pronounciation but ph in Nepali is NOT an "f" sound so I believe it is pronounced as, "pee-you", what a place for tourists to hang out). There is NOBODY in any of the bar/restauants that I pass. Eventually I pick one that has second story open air seating with a good view of the lake.

Indeed, gin & tonic is on their bar list. But wait, they have a margarita. But wait, this is like no other margie I've ever seen. Tequila, lemon juice and coke. Well, I'll given anything a try once, and if this is good, who knows, perhaps it will start something back in the US. Well, perhaps not. It is the worst margie I've ever had, and I've had some bad ones. I quickly switch to the venerable G&T. The service at this place is horrific, but what a great place to just hang out and watch the world go by.

There is a distinctive style of boat that plies the water of Lake Pee-you. It looks like a narrow dory, with bow and stern higher than the middle and is paddled like a canoe. A dozen or so are flitting across the lake. There are about 200 pulled up on the shore, giving a feel for how few people are visiting Pokhara at the moment. The place had a bad rap due to Maoist trouble in the past, but with the Maoists winning the election here in Nepal, that is no longer the case. It appears to be taking longer for the tourists to rediscover Pokhara.

I have a light dinner and head off to bed.