Wed - Getting there|
- I'd had enough of Kathmandu so I decided towards the lakeside town of Pokhara. The LP guidebook raved about a town Bandepur half way so I decided to have a few days there first.
- After time delays or the laundry fiasco I made it to the road out of KTM and along to the Ringroad junction : After 15 mins I picked up a minibus towards Pokkarha. After 4 hours it dropped me at the base of the hill and I got on a jeep bus up the steep 7Km road passing the smashed overturned bus where 1 person had died on Monday. (We had passed another overturned bus earlier) I was in a hotel by 4pm.
- Actually as I walked to the ring road I was outside a shop some distance off the road, when a taxi driver saw me he shouted out and pulled up next to me straight into a dog. It lived, but there was a definite thud.
| explore 
- It's not great, but it's miles better that Dulikhel. It's a tidy preserved town perched high up on the main valley edge. It's even got a tourist office .. turns out the town's tourism plan has European Union funding. It's secret is the fertile tablelands , which lie 200m down the other side. It was a major tading town on the Tibet - India route until 20 years ago when the new road was built 25Km away.- I walked down the main street full of cafes and hostels. OK, but not a great atmosphere though ... I'm sick of all the kids constantly saying Namaste already .. went to a place for sunset, but it was cloudy. Night-time is hardly special, power is off from 6pm till 8pm and then everyone is in bed by 9pm
| Thursday - exploration
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- Well when I got up at 6am to go to the old fort to see sunrise no-one was up. Actually the sun doesn't come up over the hill till 6.45am. OK, but not amazing .. sun appears as a red spot and slowly the snow caps of the Himalayas which appear to float above the clouds also go pink.
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Walk to Ramkot
- "a unspoiled indigenous village of round houses. One follows a path along the basin above the tablelands. In fact there are only 2 round buildings the rest are square buildings with electricity. There wasn't even anywhere to buy a cup of tea. I was bugged by the unemployed 20 somethings ... bit boring .. apparently there had been a big festival the day before so people were still recovering. I came back across the valley floor : a lot of biggish rice paddys. It was a hell of a walk back up into Bandipur.
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Thu -
- I was advised the big cave is not worth
visiting as it's too far down the hill. So I strolled to the forest trails : boring. Then down to the 5 sacred water fountains .. back into town .. wasting time having tea and being bugged by kids. Town dead at night.
| Friday |
- I thought I ould give Bandipur 1 more day, and I could get some work done. - No there weren't many tourists and no interesting conversation from the locals .. so it was boring.
| Sat- Wrong path |
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- OK I'll leave. Rather that face another steep bus journey I decided to walk down to the valley main road to Dumre town. I'd got it burnt into my brain that the route started at the bottom of the high street next to the 5 water fountains. The path is called the "old road", and indeed there was a just driveable track which some buses use at the bottom of the High Street. I imagined all the old baggage trains from Tibet coming up this way. - but actually right from the beginning I had got 2 similar place names confused. The road went down it the right direction, but then instead of coming to a pass and dropping down it became level. I cut down on a side path through villages, but arrived in the valley 3Km further East of Dumre so I walked. In total it took me almost 2.5 hours to get to Dumre. The proper path which started in Bandipur at another place would have been much quicker. Dumre was not even worth a look anyway, I should have just hopped on a passing bus to Pokhara.
- I'd misread something, logic had confirmed it, so I had been sure for 3 days that was the correct way, when I checked the map it actually had not marked the beginning of the correct path, nor had I passed the place during my stay..so I hadn't felt I need to check further. | | | | |