Gupteshwor Cave

I had booked a day trip today through Get Your Guide. It was basically bus transport to visit 10 sites around Pokhara. At £10, I thought it was worth it - and easier than getting around by taxi. They told me that my hotel wasn't in the pick-up area, so I had a 15-minute walk to a temple to wait for the bus, which was due at 9.30am. This meant that I had plenty of time to enjoy my breakfast of scrambled egg, toast, cumin potatoes, fresh papaya, and coffee in the hotel garden. I was joined by a French-Vietnamese guy. We found plenty to talk about. He had only arrived last night, but he was already very disappointed in Pokhara. He said he was just going to spend today waiting to see if he would get his hoped-for view of the mountains!

I gave myself plenty of time to walk to the bus stop. There, a guy on a motorbike said he would give me a lift to the real bus stop, which was by the lake, a 20-minute walk from my hotel in the other direction! Great! I had no choice but to go on the back of the bike - my third time on this trip, and I still hate it! 😄 We reached the bus stop at the same time as the bus. There were only four other people on it. The conductor insisted that I take the front seat. Over the next half an hour or so, we picked up lots more people until the bus was completely full, including two jump seats next to the driver. The conductor was standing. The last person to join the bus was the only foreigner apart from me. Unbelievably, he turned out to be from Doncaster! Steve was a few years older than me, but we had been at the same school for one school year in 1976! I was a first-year, and he was in lower sixth. What are the chances? 😄 We ended up sitting together (once I'd got rid of the very smelly local who'd left his friend to come and sit with me!), and got on well through what turned out to be a very long day!

Our first stop was at Gupteshwor Mahadev Cave, which was discovered by local people in the 1660s. It was first surveyed by Tony Waltham and colleagues who travelled overland to India and Nepal as part of the British Karst Research Expedition to the Himalaya. In 1976, a second British scientific expedition visited the cave to catalogue the animals living inside, including Great Himalayan leaf-nosed bats and fruit bats. The cave is the most famous in Nepal and attracts thousands of local tourists. There are several shrines to Shiva inside the caves. Outside the cave entrance, there is an elaborate spiral staircase full of statues and erotic imagery. Built in the early 1990s, the garish style is more reminiscent of Disney than Nepalese architecture. I chose not to descend into the dark, damp cave with hundreds of people jostling for position. I preferred to stay in the fresh air, taking photos. When Steve came out, he said I hadn't missed anything 😄.Læs mere