Day 33: Kathmandu to Pokhara

Pokhara is Nepal's second city, and at 200 km from the capital, you'd be forgiven for thinking it'd be a relatively brisk bus journey from Kathmandu. But no, this is Nepal after all, and the result of the country's crumbling infrastructure was another 9 hour sit-fest on turbulent public transport. Still, we had managed to get a decent price for our tickets with the help of my hardline negotiator philosophy (If Thomas is good cop, then at least I get to play bad cop (i.e just be a bad person as usual, if you can call it that when tempting a Nepalese bus man out of a few hundred rupees.))

The reality of the Kathmandu-Pokhara connection's shortcomings, though, lie in one fatal flaw: roadworks. The entire route is mired in dusty disarray, whole chunks of road otherwise chopped up, churned inside out, or straight up neglected. It's like if the only connection between London and Birmingham was to drive on the HS2 tracks - while they were still being built - except according to some sources online, a bit like if HS2 had been being built since literally the dawn of time (so basically, pretty much the same as what HS2 now is anyways.) Besides my strange HS2 aside there, we stopped only at what can be described as a roadside services (but not as you imagine it) to tuck into a festering buffet style Nepalese lunch, while I snacked by continuing my craze for cheese balls (crisps, not my poor personal hygiene) and coke (cola, not the class A drug I'd been offered the previous night in Kathmandu.)

It had been relatively late once we finally unloaded from the taxi to our Lakeside hotel in Pokhara, a city we would later come to love. We then feasted on some dinner in our continued state of then-trek-hangover, before wandering out to gander at Disneyland Pokhara. Yes, you read that right, Disneyland Pokhara! A wild theme park with, name-aside, an uncanny lack of resemblance to literally anything to do with Disney, and rides which were about as child friendly as battery acid, including a Ferris wheel that span so fast it probably had a Euthanasia setting. We loved it all the same! And with that, we waddled back our room where fate would have Thomas about to philosophise the meaning of a stable stomach (it hadn't been a good few days of stomach security for him, see next...)Read more