Up up, down down

After gaining enough strength to do some trekking, I found myself climbing two different hills around Pokhara's dominant landscape. First one up was the World Peace Pagoda on the south side of town. The trail starts of vaguely behind a small temple on a road leading to a separate village. I say vague because thats what it is. There really doesn't seem to be a road that leads to a certain direction but a collaboration of roads leading everywhere! After a 5 minute scouting mission I found the right track that led in to the quite woods. Stroll up the hill was supposed to take a couple of hours but right before the top I managed to take a wrong turn and ended up in the middle of a over grown dirt road surrounded by buffaloes. Fortunately I could make out the Pagoda top from the skyline so I just made my way through the jungle like Rambo. The Stupa (as the locals call the monument) wasn't all that spectacular or otherworldly as you would think but the overview of Pokhara and the Annapurna range on the background really made the trip worth wild.



Next day it was time to turn the attention to the north face of Pokhara which is host to the 1 500 meter peak of Sarangkot. Accent was going to be 600 meters in a period of roughly two hours and it really took my breath away. The neverending steps up the scenic route were definitely a test of endurance but I got there in the end (after 3 hours). I dare anybody climb up those steps and not get a feeling of remorse for eating a full blown American breakfast with bacon, eggs and that lovely greasy stuff. Luckily I didn't have that problem and brown rolls with hot chocolate stayed in without a fuss. At the finish line is the jawdropping sight of the total range which was also possible to see from Pagoda sight. Here everything looks better and you can almost touch the mountains if you imagine hard enough. Nice place to have lunch with the Nepali army watching carefully what you eat. Sarangkot is also host to a army lookout post so barbwire and sandbags for everyone!



On a side note, finished the Stephen Hawkins book with a bare grasp of the total universe. Seriously, I maybe understood one seventh of the book so it was a good point to switch back to something fictional. The three way shootout you might know from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was between George Orwell's 1984, James Clavell's Shogun and Joseph Heller's Catch 22. Since I didn't want to drop anything too confronting or heavy on the nightstand, I waited for the smoke from the guns to fade and saw that Heller's book was still standing. Picked it up and off to read! I Will give you a analysis of it when the last page has turned.

More pictures at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/timo.laaksonen/