The Sincerest Form of Flattery

I'd previously mentioned that Lakeside in Pokhara is very Westernised. Western food is promised all along the strip. There are even a couple of Italian restaurants, and a few steakhouses. A lot of effort has been put in to making Westerners feel more comfortable. Some of the food is really good, tasting as good as you'll get back home. One night I had a proper thin crust Italian pizza, which was made by Nepalese hands but was the best pizza I had eaten in a good while. There are hundreds of Nepalese employed here in the art of imitating Western cuisine.

And it's not just food, music is replicated too. On a walk down the main street our first night we heard bloody U2 being blared out from Club Amsterdam café by an all Nepalese cover band. There are a handful of coverbands here, who rotate between a few different venues, playing Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen, Jimi Hendirx, U2 and plenty other covers. And as cover bands go, they're not bad. Seeing a pony tailed Nepalese rocker pull off a Hendrix guitar solo is definitely one sight I didn't expect in Nepal. Maybe they should put that image on the Lonely Planet cover.



On probably our best night in Pokhara we even discovered a Jazz bar. We had a fun few drinks with a Canadian and two Israeli girls we met inside who were volunteering at a local orphanage. They were the only other people inside the place. But despite this lack of an audience, and to my complete surprise, four Nepalese guys took to the stage and started banging out some decent sounding jazz.



The drummer in particular was exceptional. Encourage by our enthusiastic applause, they played on past last call, and had to be asked to stop playing, at which stage we were thrown out. At this stage I'd forgotten where I was (and it wasn't just because of the beers).

It Had to Happen Some Time

I was delighted to get through India without once suffering the dreaded Delhi belly. I was under the impression that once I got past there then the food would be cleaner and safer. I'm not sure where I got this impression from, because it was completely wrong. Nepal is even worse than India for food hygiene.

I'm sorry to say I have first hand experience. My time in Pokhara was ruined by illness. This really grated me, because when you have such a fantastic place outside your room door, it's incredibly frustrating to be stuck behind it. I spent a lot of time pointlessly pondering what had caused my uncomfortable state, but it really could have been anything. Poor Gearóid had a bad case of it too.

I hadn't felt well ever since the bus journey to Pokhara. The first night I just felt under the weather, the second day I felt the same. I even felt a little better after a relaxing kayaking session out on the lake. But the third day it was full on keep close to the bathroom sickness. By that stage I was sick of being sick. I had picked up some Indian strength prescription only pills over the counter (!) in Delhi (I had heard that Ireland doesn't have anything strong enough). They worked. Be careful what you eat in Nepal.

Is food hygiene as dodgy in China?.

Rice Break

Arriving in Pokhara a few kilometres outside Lakeside, the backpacker hub, on the advice of Lonely Planet we lied to our taxi driver and told him we had a place booked already. This worked, he took us straight to where we wanted to go, and left without a fuss and without trying to bring us to somewhere where he'd make commission.

The area around the bus stop was in old Pokhara, which looked quite similar to a lot of other Nepalese towns we'd passed through. Lakeside however was very Westernised, the long main street lined with eateries offering steak and pizza, with numerous small roads off the main street containing a cluster of hostels. It was also amazingly quiet and clean. After three weeks of India, seeing a street almost clear of people and rubbish was a refreshing sight.

Lakeside gets it's name, amazingly enough, from being located along the southern bank of Phera Lake, giving the place an idyllic atmosphere. Pokhara was once a big stop on the hippie trail, and I could see why. The place still had a chilled out vibe, left over since those hedonistic days. I liked it immediately.



I know I mentioned how much I loved the food in India in a previous post (John and Gearóid loved it too), but I really really needed a break from bloody rice. And Pokhara was the place for it. After finding ourselves a place to stay, our empty stomachs were filled with pizza (me) and steak (the other two). The pizza wasn't great, but with not a rice grain in sight, I was satisfied (as were the other two). One Western splurge is acceptable, we told ourselves.

Best Seat in the House

According to the Lonely Planet Guide to Nepal:

“Bus travel in Nepal poses a significant risk of accident. It's uncommon to drive for more than an hour on any stretch of road without passing the burnt-out shell of a public bus crushed like tin foil into the canyon below. Travelling on an overnight bus trip is probably the most dangerous thing you can do in Nepal, and is certainly a bigger risk than that currently posed by the Maoists and even more dangerous than the bungee jump (only kidding on that one). You are more than 30 times more likely to die in a road accident in Nepal than in most developed countries.
During the course of researching this guide we passed ten fatal bus crashes in one ten-day period, which between them killed over 200 people. Tourist buses are generally safer than public buses but still the message is clear; keep bus travel to a minimum.”

They sounded great! With no trains in Nepal, the only alternative was to fly into Kathmandu, but that would mean gaining 1000m in altitude in a couple of hours, and besides that we wanted to go to Pokhara first. So we took our chances with the buses of death.

Having been promised a tourist bus by the agent in our hotel we booked with, we boarded the bus early the next morning to be greeted by nothing but Nepalese on board. We were directed to the tourist section, which basically meant sitting in the driver's cab area, which was separated from the passengers in the back with a plywood wall and a small door. I got to sit right up front, so I had an unobstructed view of the roads ahead.

The journey had barely begun when a traffic policeman halted it. The main road was closed. After much shouting and gesticulating, the bus driver reluctantly tried to find a detour. Down one unpaved street, we came screeching to a halt. There was a chasm in the road, which was hard to spot in the pre-dawn darkness. The driver's helper got out and inspected it. Too wide. No shit, it was about a metre gap! The batteries in my camera were dead so I was unable to get any photos unfortunately.

A detour from the detour meant we ended up driving through what seemed like one huge quarry for about 10km. I've never gone quadbiking, but I'd imagine a course is similar to what we drove through.

Like the local buses in India, we stopped to pick up and drop off passengers all along the way. The closer we got to Pokhara the busier the bus got. For the last four hours of the journey I was sitting at the windshield, along with a Nepalese lady, her son (neither of whom spoke a word of English), the gearstick (who didn't speak at all) and the driver (who shouted a lot), all cosily squeezed together. This was the best seat in the house to witness the no holding back overtaking around blind corners with a 500 foot unbarriered drop beside the road lunacy of our heroic driver. We got there in the end.