DAY 73 (Saturday 01 October 2011)

Today we set of to POKHARA, it was to be at least a 6 hour drive and what did it in our little Maruti jeep known as Mickey.  The most harrowing part of our journey was actually getting out of KATHMANDU, even though we did leave just before 0630hrs, the roads were already pretty busy, and for a Saturday we were surprised at as there is not normally much traffic on the road at that time of the morning on a normal day.

 Mickey the Maruti Jeep

Charlie did all the driving, we were supposed to have swapped half way at a place called Riverside which is near MUGLING, but when we stopped for a quick break I was more than happy for Charlie to carry on driving as Mickey doesn’t have power steering and it would have been harder for me to turn the wheel than Charlie, besides he was used to the way the vehicle handled, now once we got to our location in POKHARA, the BARAHI Hotel I could have given the driving a go as it was a straight road all the way through from KATHMANDU with no turn offs until we go into POKHARA and as usual we ended up having to ask directions to the hotel and Charlie had to do a couple of 3 point turns, but in the case of the Maruti not having power steering it was more of a 6 point plus turn.

We got to the BARAHI hotel and settled into the room, sorted ourselves out and went to explore POKHARA, well the tourist area anyway. 

Hotel Barahi

Me on the balcony of outside our room

 There were plenty of places to eat, shop and book activities if you so required to do, we just did a bit of window shopping and then ended up going for a meal at the LEMON TREE restaurant,

The Lemon Tree

the weather had turned and it was throwing it down with rain, a street dog managed to sneak into the restaurant and lie down in a corner out of the way to keep out of the wet.

View to the right from my balcony

View from the centre of my balcony

View to the left of my balcony

We went down to FEWA LAKE and I just had to take this picture of the sun coming through the clouds, this was before the clouds broke to release the rain.

After it was back to the hotel to chill before bed as we were going to head out for a bit of a walk tomorrow.  Not sure where we are going to go, but I am sure we will find something to head for.