Day What Ever?

What day is today? I have been here long enough that I have lost touch with time. I know it is somewhere around the middle to the end of February and it is the middle of the afternoon but beyond that you would win the bet if I had to guess the day and time. It is a good feeling to be timeless.

The days in the North Lakeside district of Pokhara are quite simple. It is a somewhat upscale and less hectic part of town. Here there are many are more foreigners and tourists. The hotels and guest houses can be found for about 300 npr to 1,000 npr a day, maybe more but my room is quite nice at 300. exchange is 75 npr to the dollar. The room is simple and you don’t have electricity all the time but when it is on the internet is up and works well.

The children in the families that have Guest houses learn English from tourists and in school. At my Guest house my friend is Karina who is a sweet 17 year old girl that acts much more like a 14 year old. Very nice, doesn’t like to work too much but keeps the place running while her folks are doing other things. There is also an older and younger brother both of whom are involved in school. Karina said she quit school because she didn’t like it.

The continual sound of hammers, saws and tuk-tuks overwhelm the quiet of the lake side view during the day, though the mornings are quiet lovely. Everywhere in the town building projects are active. The quality of construction is like you might have seen in Mexico 50 years ago. Some brickwork, some cement, some bamboo and wood construction. Almost no power tools except saws and they stop when the electricity stops.

If you have never seen them a tuk-tuk is a small but sturdy diesel engine on two wheels with long handles that come back to the driver. Well a picture might help. – Some tuk-tuks, unmuffled are so loud I can not imagine the drivers have any hearing left.

And the matching Cement Mixer.

I have spent most of the day just lounging around. I spent a couple hours putting together a set of waypoints via Google earth that will be my starting guide for the vol-bivi which I will start in 2 to 4 days. The general plan is to go from Pokhara to Katmandu via paraglider on a tack that will put me over 2-3000m foot hills. Not many have done the route but it is quite doable. We will see.

More later.
Preacher