On the way to Pokhara
Pokhara is a real tourist hub. There is a district in the city near a beautiful lake that is meant just for tourists. It is very easy to forget, while being there, that the country you are staying in, is still the same poor Nepal. Streets are full of souvenir shops, white fashionable tourists, fancy romantic restaurants, which offer much larger variety of food (not only Tibetan noodles and ravioli, like in most of Nepal) and pubs, where to enjoy evening concerts with western music.
It can be paradise island when you arrive there, but soon it can become quite boring.
There is still one very good thing about touristic places - as competition is high between different hotels, you can have a very cheap room with high standard compared to the rest of Nepal, in the case you are able to bargain. We got a nice clean double room with attached bathroom for 200 NRS (less than 2 EUR).
Real Pokhara starts there, where the tourist zone ends - cows, touts, children sniffing glue, beggars, dust, chaos, rubbish etc.
Vegetable market is quite picturesque, though. And when you enter into the Tibetan refugee camp in the middle of Pokhara hectic streets, you may find yourself in a pleasant peace for a moment.
washing section
Our cook ! We fell in love in one restaurant on Nepalese side, just around the corner of the international tourist zone. Good frood, better prices !
Boot house and repairing CENTER
Bank
An older man was passing by, also stunned by the scene. He started to chat with us: "What a great technique !", he said. His accent sounded so familiar somehow and after little while when we asked where is he from, he replied: "It's a small country in north-eastern Europe, near Finland. It is called Estonia."
No mentioning of Russia :-)
And how often does it happen, that one estonian meets another estonian somewhere far away from the home ?!
Professor of Tallinn University of Technology, department of civil engineering
Our plan was to stay in Pokhara as long as we will be able to see Himalayas. Every morning first thing we did was checking the cloud situation outside. Some mornings were more promising than the others, but in general the situaltion was not good at all.
After almost one week of waiting, we decided to take a hike up to the hill of Buddhist Peace Pagoda in a good hope to see at least something. The cloud situation was maybe 5 points out of 10. Pokhara is the city, where Himalayas are the closest, so on a day with clear air the picture should be magnificent.
But again our hopes were too high. Even though we had the feeling that clouds are slowly slowly backing off, they were probably moving only in our heads. We waited an hour, hoping that maybe maybe it will be like in Tatra mountains, where clouds can disappear after some moments. But this theory did not work.
Himalayas behind the clouds
"Fish-tale" - a glimpse of one, the most picturesque peak
Peace Pagoda
Unlike to western culture, where all the inappropriate things happen behind the thick walls, in India and Nepal and probably in most of third word countries, all the life happens on the streets. Including meat production.
We came across a scene, which made pure vegetarians out of us.
Meat shop - goats standing in line and waiting for their destiny. Unfortunately the destiny is the same to all of them and aside from this, they also have to look how their mothers-sisters-brothers are being slaughtered..... !
Meat production is cruel everywhere, not only in Asia, but when actually seeing this process with your own eyes, many might reconsider their eating habits.
Tibetian protest march taking place just before our leaving
Bus station in Pokhara corresponds exactly to the discription in Lonely Planet - a dirty dusty hole
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