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Album: By Country | By Date Nepal | June 2001 < Prev: Good-bye Varanasi; Hello Nepal | Next: Galeshor to Tatopani >
Travelogue: By Country | By Date Nepal | June 2001  

June 2001 - Starting Our Trek

Five interesting hours by bus from Pokhara to Beni and then a short walk to Galeswor

Monica with mysterious weed in the garden of a local restaurant Pokhara has a lake . . . and rolling green hills . . . and loads of small cornfields. All through town there are small plots of corn. (Corn is so reassuringly familiar.)
Cow house Walking down a Pokhara street Our favorite breakfast spot. (While trekking, we discovered it was also Kris and Verlee's favorite spot.) The food is good, there's alot of it, and we like seeing Angela, the owner's daughter, romping around and causing small amounts of trouble A shrine with pictures of the the former King and Queen
Painting a thanka, a mandala used for meditation and sold to tourists in Pokhara. Looking out the bus window on the way to Beni to start our trek On the bus to Beni Our first suspension bridge, across the Kali Gandaki at Beni
A shrine to the royal family in Beni Cow bath The toilet at the Paradise guesthouse in Galeshor The main "road" is on the left. It runs past the green awnings. The little hut is part of the guesthouse. The "road" is a path, sometimes stone, sometimes dirt, and sometimes mule . . . well, you can guess.
Mule train headed up the "road" Nandi at the Galeshor temple Maggie putting flowers near the Nandi statues The statues with Maggie's flower
Temple bell One of the temples This temple has a map on it that shows how one is supposed to circle each temple and in which order Smiling sadhu
Shrine in one of the temples Sadhu Vishnu, resting on snakes in a pool of water (the water is supposed to be milk, the children tell me.) Sitting on the temple grounds and thinking how lucky we are
Dhal Bhat, rice and lentil soup and vegetables and a little pickle and hot sauce. The list of components is the same all over, but the taste varies widely. This is the regular Nepali dinner. It is customary for the cook to offer more of everything, so it's a wonderful thing to order while hiking. Since it's the offseason, we often had to wait an hour or so before the food was ready, but that was a nice (and usually interesting) way to rest in the middle of the day.