Day 13: Pokhara, Nepal

Chinese Version / 中文版本

Today we had to take a long bus ride again. Our destination is the second biggest city of Nepal - Pokhara. There is no specific bus station in Kathmandu, all the long haul buses just park along the main street outside of Thamel. After a game of looking for the bus, we finally found our bus to Pokhara. Though it was a long haul travel bus, the interior looked unexpectedly worse. Half of the passengers were tourists and the other half were locals. All seats were already assigned on the bus ticket, therefore you couldn't randomly pick the seat. Even there was strong body oder coming from your previous seats, you still couldn't abandon your seat. Yup, I am describing the harsh condition of taking Nepalese buses.

I saw cucumber, yuck!

When the bus departed Kathmandu, Chloe and I fell asleep immediately. But after an hour, the bus stopped suddenly. There was traffic jam again! Yet there seemed to be no reason this time, please don't tell me it's striking again!!! Nevertheless, this time was different from the first time we got stuck on the highway, which the bus did not completely stop, but moved slowly from time to time. This kind of traffic jam is totally different from those notorious traffic jams in Bangkok or Istanbul. For the latter, you can still see what's happening ahead of the road and you can still assume the delayed hours. However, the highway of Nepal is built along the hills, you actually do not know what happens beyond. The most annoying thing is that may take from few hours to half a day, simply can not be underestimated at all.

The street food seller seen from the bus

After the snail movement of the bus for 45 minutes, the car line finally accelerated. When we started to load off our minds, the bus stopped in front of some restaurants all of a sudden. The driver of our bus left the car without saying anything, when half of the local people followed suits. We three were quite confused at that moment and we wondered if this was a toilet break or a lunch break? If it's lunch break, how long would the bus stay then? We didn't guess any longer, but hopped off the bus and got some snacks instead. After 30 minutes, every one got on the bus together, and the bus headed to Pokhara again.

In fact, it was a 6-hour bus ride. In the end, it turned out to be 7+ hours including the traffic jam and lunch break. My legs started to be numb once they touched the ground. 

Unlike Kathmandu, there is a bus station in Pokhara. When we got off the bus, there were, once again, many promoters coming towards us. And the hotel we were looking for did indeed come to the bus station, although we had not made any reservation in advance. So we ended up being taken by the driver from the hotel we are going to stay. The environment is quite nice, we can overlook the Annapurna Mountains from the big window of our room. There is also an air-conditioner in the room, but we can not turn it on no matter how hard we tried to click on the remote control.

Overlooking Annapurna Mountains from our room

In the end, we did not do any sightseeing. Instead, we just stayed in the room to surf the internet, chat on viber with friend and take a nap for 2 hours. At night, we had dinner at a Korean dinner around the corner. The grilled pork with rice tasted quite delicious, it has been the best meal so far in these few days. 

We ended the night with a scoop of mango icecream. Finally, here comes the hassle-free vacation!

Took our time to relax at our room