Pokhara, Nepal – Battled the mosquitoes in the bedroom all night and had to fumble around in the dark at 3:30 a.m. looking for matches to light the mosquito coil because there was not any power. Left the hotel at 7 a.m., breakfast at the German Bakery, then I walked to the lakeside to meet Ram and give him the pack.
We were doing an eight-day trek, Pokhara to Muktinath, which is a little more than a 110 kilometers, Pokhara to Jomsom a 110 kilometers. We boarded the local bus up to old Pokhara, ride bicycle the day before, and disembarked. Now the trek would begin. We could have taken the bus farther up into the mountains, but I wanted to start walking, so we headed up the side of the hill towards our first village, Sarangkot. The village sits high up on a ridge above Pokhara and it was a mighty climb on the way up.
Once we were at the top of the ridge, it was no problem and it was just the hike up there. We passed the terraced wheat fields, each surrounded by a low wall made of stacked shale stones. Passed many a village house and had a really nice walk through Sarangkot to the next city of Naudanda at 1430 meters where we stopped for lunch. We rested there for a spell before moving on, finally stopping at Khare at 1710 meters for the evening. Ram knew the lodge owner and we turned out to be the only people staying there that evening. It was one of those rickety old lodges with spaces between the boards when it was built, rather like one of the old Tahoe cabins. Our room was just large enough for two beds and somehow a poster of the space shuttle had migrated to Nepal and ended up on the wall in our room.
Ram and I headed downstairs for a beer and to watch the sun go down. Once it got dark, we got a deck of cards from the hotel (yeah!) but since Ram had never seen a pack of western cards, I had to teach him the names of the suits. I taught him Crazy Eights, a relatively easy game, but since you continually have to call out the suits all the time in addition to the fact that Ram could not remember the English names of the suits, he had to make himself a translation table to help him remember. It was really funny teaching him this game and he had a great time learning it as well. It got too cold to sit around any longer, so we headed upstairs and crashed for the night.