Pokhara, Nepal – Up at 5 a.m. to see Rich off on his journey. I told him that I would leave him a note at the hotel and another one in Kathmandu telling him where to find me. He got on his bus to start his trek and I wandered up to the restaurant to write and watched the sun come up and light up the mountains. I rented a bike and went to the lakeside to sort everything out with Ram regarding our departure the next morning.
When that was done, I biked the 5 to 6 kilometers up to the opposite side of old Pokhara. This is what the town looked like before tourism and electricity arrived and there was a marked difference. It looks like a mountain village, Squaw Valley, California kept springing to mind. Narrow streets with your basic two-storey buildings. I really did get the feeling I was in Lake Tahoe with the mountains rising up behind the buildings, but this was not Tahoe. This was Nepal, the tiny mountain kingdom.
After a long ride, I went back to the hotel and had a beer, which floored me. I slept away most of the day and woke up at dusk, just in time to ride into town and get the backpack I would be using on the trek from Ram. I picked up a pair of wool gloves for 70 rupees, figured I might need a pair of those at 3000 meters.