Pokhara. Pretty nice place. Pretty big lake. Good view from the hills surrounding it. Loads of hotels. Loads of tourists. And for me, a few bruises.
A good way to explore Pokhara is to jump on a bike (motorized) and zip around for a few hours. A good way to end up with some bruises is to zip around off road on a road bike with some young whipper-snapper who has grown up doing the dirt bike thing. His version of "gravel" and mine were vastly different. Same goes for "small slope". We rounded a corner of perfectly good tarmac, and he indicated a road that was heading straight up the bloody hill. Needless to say, I stalled the bike. And this was the easy part! And seens as it was a kick-start contraption, I had to yell at him to come down and start it again. That done, we started up the hill again, the small stones ie. gravel quickly turned into mini-rocks or huge friggin' stones! And the small slope quickly got steeper.
This is where my fun began. I think I held my breath the whole way up, only getting chucked off maybe 3 or 4 times. I reached the top and tired to get off the bike looking all cool, calm and collected, but my legs had turned to jelly, and my hands had developed quite a shake. Sigh.
The reason for the insane journey was a visit to the Peace Pogoda, from where an awesome view of Pokhara is laid out before you. Also a chance to get a bit of a tan, read a book and chill out before even contemplating the trip back down the "gravel" road.
The trip back down was uneventful by comparison. I got chucked off a few times, and this time was going slow enough to realise that it was a long way bloody down if I arsed off my bike. This of course was followed by thoughts of "I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die", and "If I don't die I'm gonna get hurt REAL bad". Ok I admit it I'm a wuss. But quite frankly the size of those rocks, I'd much rather be dead than bleeding and broken.
At the bottom, on the tarmac, there was a quite religious moment for me. There exists a photo of me kissing and worshipping the asphalt. If I could have become one with it, believe me I would have.
Other than this one day of excitement, Pokhara is just like any other tourist town. Fun to visit, have a laugh and leave.
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