Plodding on in Pokhara

So after our escapades in Chitwan NP, our adventure continued as we headed to Pokhara. It was here that we were going to do our hiking and because we had only a limited amount of time, we were going to do a 5 day trek into a compressed 3 days. But before we did that, we went for a wander around the lake in the city and did a little shopping for essential supplies like a descent waterproof layer! Our carbo-loading preparation meal was a visit to the Everest steak house - delicious!

But the time soon came for our trek to start and we left in a minibus for our start point. The first 20 mins or so were with 3 others from our group but then we split as they were going off on another trek! So that just left Will (the driver), Luke, Prakash (our guide) and us two.

So we set off on our expedition and by 12:30, after a fairly flat easy 3 hour stroll, we stopped for lunch and were told that this was our destination for that day so we could chill out for the rest of the afternoon. This was a bit rubbish considering we were meant to be doing a compressed 5 day trek so we weren't impressed with 3 hours.

So we managed to persuade our guide to let us try to do the next days hike (7 hours) in the afternoon. Our guide told us it was impossible and he had never done it so there was no way we could. What he didn't realise, was that all four of us are actually quite stubborn so after we had finished our steaks, we left.

Little did we know that after 10 minutes of walking, that gentle slope turned into a flight of never ending stairs. After a further 10 minutes, the monsoon heavens opened. The rain continued for 4 hours and the  stairs did not end until we arrived 6 hours later in the dark.

By this time, we were all soaked to the bone and frozen. We eventually got to our teahouse that we were spending the night in after completing the impossible! Our legs were sore and were seizing up. As we staggered through the door, we were greeted by a wood burning stove and a flight of stairs up to the bedrooms. After 6 hours of solid stairs, another few would be easy right? Wrong. These stairs were about 40cms high (no exaggeration!) and our legs struggled to make it! But on the plus side, there were hot showers. Or there were, but the hot water was solar powered and as it was dark, it meant we just had freezing mountain spring water. But we did have a very nice meal! Our tearoom was called 'awesome view' but as it was dark, we had no idea if that was true or not!

We went to bed in our little cardboard room secretly hoping that our guide wouldn't knock on our door at 4am for our summit attempt! But he did!

After a 90 minute hike in the dark, we reached the top!

And then we went back for breakfast with the best view!

Then we started the long haul down! Eventually we made it do our starting village. Our quick stats were 50 kms in 15 hours of hiking and approximately 74 billion stairs! But there was a climb and descent of 2.5 vertical kms.

I think it's fair to say that we were all totally ruined when we got back to Pokhara 1 day early! So with our day in lieu, we basically did nothing! Just rested and recuperated!

At least we don't have to do anything as we relax in the truck on the way to Kathmandu!

Rumble in the Jungle

The drive to the border was very long & slow as we continued to dodge more pot holes, goats etc & the roads were just rammed with people & vehicles. This meant we crossed the border into Nepal at nightfall, with 5 minutes to spare! That's Alex & Gill style without us even being in charge!

Our first glimpses of Nepal was the next morning and even in that tiny distance, there was a marked difference. There was less rubbish, more people were waving at the truck, no hassling or beggars so far.

We arrived into Chitwan National Park & it was literally a breath of fresh air. It was peaceful, still and the people were so friendly & helpful. We found a lovely family run restaurant for dinner were we had our first momo's (Nepali dumplings) and amazing banana fritters for desert! This place already had the thumbs up from us.

The adventure began next morning, when we were taken by Jeep, which happened to be a horse drawn cart, to go trekking in the jungle on elephant back.

With the first light of the day flooding through the leaves the jungle was mainly still apart from the amazing bird song. As it turned out our elephant was slightly wayward & just wanted to stop, eat & fart, and was not the least bit perturbed when the Mahut tried to move her on. We did not see huge amounts of wildlife, some deer & a wild boar, but it was a really beautiful and peaceful ride.

After a relaxed day we headed back into the jungle to stay in a lookout tower for the night. We'd been told that the chances of us seeing tigers were slim to none, but we were hopeful. We headed up into a three storey tower in the middle of a clearing with a couple of others from the group. From there we had a great view of the last of the elephant rides of the day & had the first sighting of a rhino. Pretty cool first 5 minutes! Once the elephants had plodded on we headed into the jungle on foot. Thank goodness we didn't see a tiger at this point otherwise it would have been well scary! We did see some deer & a wild boar. Once we'd arrived back in the tower & continued peering round a warden came through & told us there was a mother & baby rhino close by. We went in search. They were not far beyond the clearing munching away surrounded by deer. The next few minutes were very exciting. Anne started motioning that she could see a tiger in the grass! As the guide & I checked in the binoculars, it definitely looked like an orange back stalking through the grass close to the deer. After trying to gesture & explain to the other two, who were ahead, it transpired that a monkey can look very much like a tiger! Who'd thought!

That night we did however have more excitement. We saw a baby rhino feeding just 10 metres away from the tower by torch light. Amazing!

The next day was leisurely after our early start, watching more deer & listening to the jungle come to life. We pottered around on bikes for the day & the majority of traffic we met, were elephants.

Elephant bath time is about 10.30am every day. The Mahuts bring them down to the river to soak their sensitive skin & a few tourists while they're at it. We thought we'd join in the fun & it was fantastic! We paid the equivalent of 60p to climb onto the elephants bare back & have it blow water at us from its trunk & throw us into the river! Climbing back onto an elephant via its trunk is not dignified in away way but great craic!

It was such a peaceful beautiful place & everything was very laid back in 'Nepali time'. We'd only been in the country a few days but what a fantastic few days!

The glorious Ganges

A mammoth drive day later took us to a city called Varanasi, one of Hindu's holiest cities and on the riverbanks of the Ganges. This city, smelt worse than Agra and walking down a typical street, wildlife you would see are cows, pigs, rats and millions of flies. Hindu's believe that to break the cycle of reincarnation your body has to be put into the Ganges at death. So this city is full of dead bodies waiting to be cremated and old people waiting to die. If you are too poor to get cremated, you just get thrown in whole. If you die as a child or when pregnant, you aren't allowed to be cremated so are just thrown in too! We asked someone what happens to the bodies and they said they just get eaten by crocodiles downstream! Hence, it was known as 'very nasty' rather then Varanasi in the group.

Unfortunately for us, the river has burst its banks and was flowing too fast for boat rides. But we were able to get to see some of the ghats by foot to see people washing their clothes and themselves metres away from where bodies are put in.

We were told the fact that in the UK, drinking water has to have less than 1000 microscopic particles of faeces per litre but the Ganges typically has over 15 million. I.e. that water is disgusting and avoid contact at all costs!

We also were taken by our tuktuk driver (initially against our wishes) to his brothers silk weaving factory and outlet! It was actually quite interesting to see how it was done and we were given a free cold diet coke to slurp on as we endured another selling display of pashminas.

Other than that, our time in very nasty was spent relaxing and avoiding the rain and Gill managed to get a bit of a massage at the hotel spa.

In honesty, neither of us particularly enjoyed India as much as we thought we would. I think it was Oscar Wilde who initially described India as an 'assault of the senses' and he was absolutely spot on. With constant smells (as detailed in Agra), constant blaring multi-tone horns, shop keepers harassing you and children trying to snatch things or beggars scratching. And of course the food, chicken or mutton packed full of spices but the overwhelming memory is just the filth everywhere. There are some absolute gems like the Taj, golden temple and McLeod Ganj (basically Tibet anyway) but everyone on the trip was very much looking forward to Nepal for hopefully, and literally, a breath of fresh air.

Raindrops and parrots and white marble buildings...

So after our monkey encounter in Jaipur, we headed east towards Agra, for the Taj Mahal -good news. Bad news is that it was still very humid.

Not even particularly hot, just dripping wet. And then when it is starting to get unbearable, torrential rain descends bringing a coolness for about 10 minutes before the humidity starts to rise again.

So it was on one of these particularly humid occasions when we stopped about 15kms short of our hotel for a lunch stop. Slightly bemused, we got out of the truck and immediately had to flee for cover from a barrage of locals trying to sell their tat, entice you into their shop or just rob you. So very quickly 40 people all came into the only restaurant in the place and ordered food. The owner almost died of a heart attack so while some people tried to revive him and coax out their food, a group of us found out that there was in fact a world heritage site 3 kms up the road, which is why we had stopped. So we hopped into the shuttle bus for the hefty price of 5p each and made our way up to the place while our stunned chefs went about starting to prepare the food.

It turns out it was a palace that used to be brilliant but now was slightly less so. So we wandered around and then decided to head back as we thought the others would be staring to eat soon.

The buses were every 5 minutes so we went back to the bus stop. And waited. And waited. No bus for 15 minutes. No problem, we thought it wasn't far so we could walk it and hail a bus an route.

We walked for 30 minutes and got all the way back to the restaurant before seeing a single bus. When we got back, everyone else has finished their food and were on the truck and there were 6 buses, all lined up, with their drivers eating their lunch! Rubbish. So we apologised profusely and ran to grab our food, through the gauntlet of shopkeepers, and we were back under way.

The guide book told us it was free to get into Agra fort on a Friday, and as it was late afternoon on a Friday, we thought we would head down for a quick little look. Turns out that either something has changed or the guide book never told the Indians as it isn't free, just tax free. Throughout India there is a very variable tax amount added to anything, ranging up to about 30%, and apparently almost entirely at the billers discretion. This time it was the tiniest amount so it was like having no discount at all so we decided we would go when we had some more time to see it.

The Taj was poking out the cloud along the river bank so we thought we would have a walk towards it. We stumbled upon a Hindu funeral parlor a couple of hundred metres from the Taj. It was really interesting to see as they were cremating the bodies and throwing the ashes into the river. But soon our presence started to draw a crowd so we decided to leave in search of food.

The next morning we stood in the pre-dawn darkness and torrential rain waiting for the gates of the Taj to open. It was definitely worth the early morning as when we rounded to corner and saw that iconic view, there was no one else there.

This majestic mausoleum is even more amazing when you get up close and go inside. Supposedly the worlds most symmetrical building, was built by a grieving king to house the body of his late wife. As soon as the Taj was finished, the king was overthrown by his own son and was imprisoned for the rest of his life, only able to see his wondrous creation from Agra fort. This is the view he had of it from within the fort.

Other than the Taj and the fort, Agra is very little more than a rubbish tip. With people using the street as a public toilet, and cows wandering aimlessly, while locals discard their rubbish or waste on the sides of the road. Like the rest of India, there is a constant overwhelming smell. It is either a spice/incense or a poo/rubbish smell that is constantly filling your nostrils.

Agra isn't worth coming to, but the Taj most definitely is.

Pink monkeys

After negotiating our way out of Delhi we were headed along more potholly toll roads, dodeging the goats, cows and gunho drivers on the way to Jaipur.

We arrived into our lovely hostel late in the afternoon and we decided to make the most of the daylight. After managing 4 people in a tuktuk for a longer distance, we figured 5 in a slightly larger one would be ok. This basically meant that Gill was balancing on the bar on the side, so her rear was hanging over the side. After having her bum slapped by 3 boys and having a few close shaves with other tuktuks, we made it into the walls of the pink city, though it definitely looked more orange!

We had a little wander round and watched the sun set before going onwards to find dinner!

The next day we went on another tuktuk tour (we hadn't learnt our lesson from Delhi...) and we went to some really cool places! We visited the amber fort first where we saw elephants, underground tunnels and even got to play traditional drums!

Then we went off to the 'Elephant Island' which basically is where the elephants live when they aren't hauling tourists up and down the stone walkway to the top of the fort. It was interesting to see but the trainers were unnecessarily harsh with them, hitting them with sticks and poking them with metal spikes. We didn't like that so we left.

And went to the water palace - only for a quick photo stop as you can't get into it!

Then we headed into the city. We went to a place called Janter Manter which is a place where a random king liked astrology and built lots of instruments to stare at the sun and stars with. It was interesting though and had the world's largest sundial! We managed to have a 'discussion' with our guide as the instruments that said the precise time using sunlight were in fact 27 minutes out. He claimed that due to where we were on earth, you had to add or take away a certain amount of minutes depending on the curvature of the earth and angle the light hits and something boring like that. So we came to the conclusion that it was perfect if you take the time it says and add 27 minutes...

Then we went to a 'wind temple' and after a few farting jokes, we wandered through the many rooms!

The highlight was the monkey temple though. This was less of a monkey temple, rather a hill climb up with loads of monkeys and a little temple on the top with no monkeys at all. It does however have a monkey ghost. When we got there, we had to take our shoes off and put them in a closed cupboard. One of the people we went with had one flip flop mysteriously disappear, supposedly from a monkey (although no one saw one up there the whole time we were there!), and then miraculously reappear after we kicked up a bit of a fuss. When the Indians asked for a tip for finding it again, we quickly left with all of our money. The swines! Anyway, some cool photos!

The Taj is next!