nepal cycling tour

day 3 : pokhara exploration

september 16, 2011:
we had asked the hotel owner to wake us up in the morning if the snow mountains are visible. so we get a knock at 6 AM - and we clamber onto the roof to take photos of annapurna south, machhapichhure, annapurna III, annapurna IV, and the smaller lamjung himal.

annapurna ii and iv

machhapuchhare

annapurna south

annapurna range from pokhara from right to left: annapurna iv (7525m), annapurna ii (7937m), machhapuchhare (6993m), annapurna I (8091m), annapurna south (7219m). annapurna III (7555m) is hidden behind clouds to the right of machhapuchhre. within half an hour, clouds came up and the peaks disappeared for the rest of the day. (video by binoy)

order of peaks as seen from pokhara. according to this tourist map the visible peaks should be annapurna south, annapurna I, machhapuchhre, annapurna III, annapurna II and lamjung himal. , annapurna IV is not shown and the relation of hiunchuli and annapurna I is too close to call.

after catching up with the rest of our sleep, we have breakfast at the rooftop restaurant of the adjacent dharma inn; the owner there has come to know of us bicyclists arriving there - news spreads! we then set off along the tourist strip, and check out the fishtail lodge, which can be reached only by crossing a small channel by boat.

binoy in the pre-dawn light - annapurna III behind him. phewa tal, damside.

"open defecation free district" - the first in nepal: sign outside the secondary tourist office. never found the main tourist office.

a protracted hunt for the tourist information office fails after it refuses to turn up anywhere near the damside location indicated on the map. we then go to another tourist office near the airport, who don't have anything useful, and certainly not the poster of the annapurna snow peaks we were looking for.

the tourist strip at pokhara lakeside

rAm ghAT

we then continue to the nayabazAr area, and on a hunch of finding the seti river which flows through pokhara, we turn right and end up at rAm ghAT, a crowded neighbourhood where the seti river has carved out a wide canyon.

the steps going down to ram ghat go past people's doorways and chicken and goats and carriers lifting huge bags of sand up from the river bed... and then, as soon as we reach the river, we find this group of boys diving off the ledges into the raging current...

a local boy executing a beautiful dive

despite the extremely swift (and cold) waters there are a dozen kids jumping off the ghat and other cliffs onto the deep current. the slightly older youths are jumping off the higher precipices and swimming across the river, etc.

by age eight or so, most of these boys were swimming quite well indeed - legs kicking, stroking well, though head immersion / breathing wasn't the most efficient. they have all learned it here. having learned swimming in the ganga myself, i am all for learning swimming in natural waters - but such high currents must make it a rather dangerous affair - in a matter of minutes you would be out of this safe wide gorge and into the rocks that lie downstream...

a group of young boys, all stark naked, were jumping off the ghat into the roiling seti...

binoy and i also have short swim - binoy also does a dive - and then we check out mahendra pool - the steel bridge overlooking the area.

binoy emulating the local kids

the river emerges from what looks like a underwater passage but is in actuality a very sharp gorge, which is about 3m across all the way to the top. some of the youth were jumping off a ledge at that end as well.

a numebr of pariah kites were flying above the gorge. binoy went to explore the further reaches.

pokhara map

nepal tourism map of pokhara. see maps of nepal page for a larger map.

search for a rafting trip

our plan now is to try to find a whitewater raft that will take us to gAi ghAt, which is close to nArAyanghaT. so we head back to the hotel, lunch, and drive down - we will look for rafting companies at damauli or mugling, which are popular start points for rafts. indeed, just before the seti bridge at damauli we find a group with their rafts parked by the road; they will be going on a two-day trip the following morning, but they can't take one-day folks. they suggest we try at mugling. we break for a couple of beers sitting under the bridge overlooking the seti and the sad new apartment blocks coming up across us on the left bank (click on image to see).

at damauli, we went down to the riverside. chilled danish beer by a nepali mountain river.

binoy by the seti. seti river landscape at damauli

beer in nepal

alcohol licenses are far easier in nepal than in India, and every small tea shop will also be selling beers and harder drinks. beers come in 650ml bottles, and the market is dominated by european brands - it's hard to escape the huge hoardings for Tuborg beer everywhere. tuborg was introduced in 1990, and today is the most available brand, and seems to have ousted most of the domestic brands. you also find lots of san miguel and carlsberg - all three are made under license by gorkha breweries in narayangarh (owned by carlsberg). gorkha brewery also makes coca cola, so it has a near stranglehold on the nepal beverage market.

at pokhara, we caught rumours that some people had died after drinking tuborg beer that may have been spiked with methyl alcohol. however, the only reliable news item we could find on this said that two people had fallen ill after drinking tuborg, and several company people had been arrested (himalayan times 12 sep '11). local beers are harder to find. we could try two: gorkha was a pretty standard lager, while tiger was a "strong" beer - which we didn't care to try. beers like kathmandu or everest are advertised but we couldn't find them.

fortunately, nepal seems less prone to the scourge of "strong" beer that seems to have afflicted india - at least the tourist areas.

the golden cheer at a fish stall in a country fair

beer prices

beer is one of the few things that's more expensive in a kathmandu store than at a paris supermarket. the good news is that the price at restaurants is about the same as in stores.

as of 2011 end, prices are NR 250-350 in restaurants and NR 200 at smaller shops. that's a good bit higher than most of india, where 650ml of kingfisher costs between rs 50 (delhi) to rs 90 (u.p.).

so, a clean hotel room (about NR 1000, say) may be less expensive than three beers in its restaurant. but of course, it's well worth it!

mugling: no rafts!

reaching mugling at dusk, we stop at the bridge which is under maintenance. we walk back and forth over thick iron plates, just below the confluence where the marsyangdi from the left (NW) joins the trishuli from the right (NE). mugling is a major road junction where three highways follow three river valleys - marsyangdi towards pokhara, trishuli east towards kathmandu and trishuli south towards narayanghat.

after a heroic search among the many tea and snack shacks, we locate the rafters' office, but the two women who are busy cooking dinner tell us that there is no rafting planned from here for some days, and that we should try at fisling (pron. fishling), about 13km towards kathmandu, on the trishuli.

eventually, at the tea shop in fisling, we meet a man who speaks english, and learn that several companies put down from here every day. he turns out to be an occasional rafting organizer himself, proud owner of an avon raft. he suggests that we should try our luck here at 10 AM tomorrow.

as the tea arrives, we notice some steps going up beside the shop. we are told that it's a footbridge. we have been tantalized by many such narrow footbridges fording many a river, so we immediately set off to explore the bridge, tea cups in hand. the night is dark and the raging river echoes up the gorge and the bridge sways with our footsteps and some wood slats shift under our feet, but the narrow walkway suspended from thick steel cables seems solid enough. we can make out some white foam in the river below - little do we to know how this water will become intimately familiar to us tomorrow.

there's no lodging at fisling so we head back the road and find a room at the dalima resorts holiday home - an opulently landscaped complex rising up from the road not too far from the manakAmana cable car. a few hours after checking in to a non-AC room, the fan and light turn off, with only a night-bulb left on, and the few staff there tell us that our rooms are on "half-line" - some sort of power saving measure perhaps. while other rooms have full electricity, they are powerless to do anything about power to our rooms. when we say that we'll move out, they say that we are welcome to do so. however, we decide not to do a move at 11pm.

during this crisis, we meet a couple of young nepali motorcycle tourists in a similar predicament. as the night deepens, they tell us gory tales of deaths on highways (boulders falling on vehicles), and other mountain dangers. at many places, you cross the river by pulling yourself across on wires with pulleys - and some of these are not very well constructed. some time back, nearer to kathmandu, 9 farmers fell to their death from one such "Tuin" (pron. twin) - when their rope broke...

in the end, binoy and i decide to pull the beds out under the stars to sleep there. but barely half an hour later, a few drops of rain start, so we pull the beds under the balcony. sometime in the night, the balcony roof starts to drip - and we finally end up inside the room only.

today's coverage:

see maps of nepal page for more maps.

* [ day 1: lumbini-tansen]
* [ day 2: tansen-pokhara 120km]
* [ day 4: fisling-rafting-nArAyanghAT]
* [ day 5: chitwan]
* [ nepal cycling tour (home) ]

[bumpy trails bicyclists homepage]

amitabha mukerjee for the bumpy trail bicyclists. sep 2011. feedback: mukerjee [at] gmail