July 21, 2007 – More Tourism and Bloodsuckers, Part II

One of the things I was most excited about seeing in Pokhara was the Himalayas (which you can see if it’s clear enough). Unfortunately, it drizzled yesterday, obscuring our view. Today, it rained buckets, so no dice again. We spent the morning watching Blood Diamond. It cleared up by 2PM though, so we rented a boat and paddled around Phewa Tal, a gorgeous lake north of the city. If you haven’t gone rowing, you should seriously consider it— it’s one of the most relaxing things you could possibly do. We then landed on the opposite shore and hiked up for 30 minutes to the World Peace Stupa, a huge pagoda with Buddhas from five nations (China, Thailand, Japan, India, and Nepal). Unfortunately, it was undergoing construction, but the sweaty uphill hike was still great exercise. The view of the city from up there was gorgeous as well.

A special highlight of the hike was the fact that we were occasionally solicited by leeches. Yep, leeches. At first, Chris got bitten. He thought it was awesome and took photos. Five bites later, he didn’t think the same. I luckily only got bitten once, and I pulled the sucker (heh, pun not intended) off pretty quickly after he latched on, but fought off three other buggers before they had the chance to sink their jaws in. By the time we got back down, Chris was bleeding a lot from his feet since leeches have an infamous blood anti-coagulant (which researchers are trying to use for stroke and heart attack medication). Nevertheless, paddling on the river was unbelievably nice, and though I crashed our boat into the shore at least three times, we got back to the operator’s shack in one piece.

We took a leisurely walk along the lakeside, and boy, is Pokhara touristy! There were dozens of hotels with signs in over ten different languages (the Korean hotel/restaurant claimed to serve dolsut bibimbap, which I haven’t had in over a year) and the number of gift shops is just staggering. This doesn’t change how peaceful the city is, and I’ll be sad to leave.