What Goes Down Must Come Up

I had a day of rest in Tatopani, having a chunk of chocolate cake as well as a dip in the hot springs there. This taught me that the best chocolate cakes are the ones you have where you didn't really expect them, and I also learned that going into a hot spring when your feet are really sore can hurt rather badly.

The next day I was walking again, planning on climbing some 1.600 meters to Ghorepani, where the scenery is supposed to be excellent. I never found out for myself, though. Walking without a guide was great for most of the time. I was able to talk to other people's guides and learn things in the evenings, and I could find my way along the trek route easily most of the places. But I never ever found the path to Ghorepani. So instead I ended up walking more than 30 kilometers on what turned out to be the last day of my trek. I almost rented a room in Beni, but when I met three young boys who told me they were going home from school and I could join them, and from where they lived there actually was a road that had buses to Pokhara on it, I decided to push on further. And that was how I learned that in Nepal, some kids have more than 3 hours of walking every day just to get to school. And that's pretty good pace walking too. Hence I killed my feet temporarily.

Anyway, I got to Baglung 10 minutes before the bus to Pokhara took off, and I was one happy man, even though I had to sit on my backpack. I put up my broadest smile, and handed out fresh mint candy to all the people around me, which made everyone smile back and their breath turned into something acceptable too. At eight in the evening the bus stopped, everybody yelled "Pokhara!" at me, and I understood that it was time to get off the bus.

It was a rather awkward situation. The bus disappeared around a bend and it was pitch black. My feet were out of order, and I didn't really know where I was. So I started my hop-along walk in a random direction, and I found a house where the people seemed to have heard of Pokhara. They pushed me back out onto the street and pointed in a few directions. I chose one, and 40 minutes later I was in Downtown Pokhara. I got a room at Hotel Mountain Top for 150 rupi (just under US$3), threw off my backpack there and rushed out to get some food before everything closed for the evening. I ended up with one of the largest servings at Everest Steakhouse; 350 grams of mexican style beef, huge salad and French fries with 3 bottles of Coca Cola to help it go down.

I actually wondered a bit about how they could serve beef here, with the holy cow situation and everything. So I asked. "Yes, sahib, illegal to kill cow Nepal. We get cow India." Where it is illegal to slaughter cows as well. Oh well. I was happy. The only thing left to do before going to bed was having a shower. Normally, I guess that should be something to look forward to. I was rather anxious about what would meet my eyes when I took off my boots and my socks, though, so I had very mixed feelings about doing it. The solution was to get into the shower, enjoy some warm water and take off the boots after having washed the rest of my body. It was not a pretty sight, but I managed to clean it thoroughly and whimper just a little bit as I put my legs and myself to bed. I slept for 15 hours.

And I woke up to the most incredible view towards the Annapurna region. Although having a room on the fifth floor wasn't too good for my foot, the view almost made me ignore the pain. In addition to the majestic mountains in the north, the lake, Fewa Tal, in Pokhara makes the scenery one of the best I've ever seen. So I went for a limp in Pokhara, and after having declined a hundred offers of marihuana and magic mushroom, I found the world's worst tourist information office. It's just opposite of the airport, has no information whatsoever, apart from some brochures from the late 1970's. There are about 6 people employed there, and their main task is to ignore anyone who comes into the office. Although the entrance is hidden behind some bushes in an overgrown garden so that they don't get much practice ignoring people, they ARE awfully good at it.

Pokhara soon began to bore me a bit. It's the same everywhere, cafes, hotels, guest houses and clothing shops. It's probably a good thing for the country to concentrate the tourist activity in one place like this, but it wasn't really what I came to Nepal for. So I had another beef, bought a book and booked myself onto a trip to a resort in Royal Chitwan National Park, at the border to India.

Just as I was ready to depart for Chitwan, I turned ill. Very ill. So ill that I spent most of my time in Chitwan lying motionless on my bed, using all my strength to stare at the roof in my bungalow. It wasn't particularly fun. For a 3-day stay I paid US$66, and it turned out to be a fairly good investment. I was the only guest at the resort, which meant I had 5 people working for me, and they took very good care of me. And there was a real toilet for me to sit on in the bathroom. They also provided me with a bucket, which the maid came to empty every now and then. All in all, having a staff working for you when you're about to die of food poisoning isn't a bad idea. I couldn't eat any of the food they made me, as it came back up really, really fast. So I lived on a banana diet for a couple of days.

I wasn't feeling up to join all the activities at the resort, but I really tried. One of them was riding horses, which I never had tried before. It was quite a challenge finding out how to hit the ground with least force, when the horse threw you off, but I got the hang of it eventually. I even have the scars to prove it. When I got tired of riding the horse back and forth on a field there, a man guided me to the Elephant Breeding Center in Chitwan. That was a fairly interesting experience. There are no local elephant herds in Nepal anymore, so the elephants in Chitwan are all imported females from India. These females are chained to large poles, and just stand there, eating grass and looking annoyed at people. Well, that's what they SEEM to do anyway. While doing this, they also spread feromones into the air. These feromones work pretty much like the Global Positioning System, in that they go into the air and are sensed by male elephants in India. Appearantly the feromones contain instructions on how to find the source of it, the female, as every now and then a male elephant comes walking from a hundred miles or so away, does its business with the female and walks back home again. And 19 months later the female has a baby elephant.

The next morning we went elephant riding, which normally is not a very comfortable experience, and definitely isn't one when you've got a headache and the painkillers have stopped working. Still, I kinda enjoyed it, and I was lucky enough that "my" elephant happened upon the endangered (and dangerous!) one-horned rhinoceros having a drink at a local lake. The rhinos look a bit pathetic. They probably don't care what they look like, though, as they hardly have any sight at all. The wonderful world of evolution has given the animal its robust shields, so that it can run down anything that moves, in case it is something dangerous. Hence, the rhino doesn't need good eyes. Luckily the rhino can see if something is so large that there is no point in trying to run it down, so sitting on an elephant is fairly safe. The huge number of torn down trees in the park didn't really make me feel too certain about that, though.

I also went on a jungle walk, hoping not to meet any tigers or rhinos. We had a guide that was armed with a wooden stick. Every year a few of those guides are killed by large animals, while protecting tourists. Although they are paid relatively well, I really hoped noone would have to be killed for my safety. I was a bit worried when a huge rhino crossed the path ahead of us. It was really exciting but it didn't see us, and I'd showered the very same morning, so it couldn't smell me either. Having had my ration of jungle, it was time to go back to the city life.