Hi dear Hive community!
Today the alarm was ringing at 4.30 in the morning. We were not tired at all, as we knew soon we will see an amazing sunrise from the nearby hill.
To avoid always paying for buses or taxis, and with the wish to be independent, we rented a motorbike for one week. We made a good deal with the lady and when in Asia, it‘s one of the best ways to explore the area.
It took us around half an hour to reach the top of the 1500 meters high hill, where enormous 108 ft tall Hindu deity Shiva statue is located. The place is called Pumdikot Shiva Statue. You can see smaller statue of deity Ganesh circling around it and as well many Shiva lingams. There is also a big temple underneath it. From here we had really beautiful view on the Himalayas giants from 6000 to 8000 meters. Besides that, we also saw down on the valley with rice fields and many many mountain villages.
We wanted to have some nice chai to warm us up. We love to support local people who are usually not approached by most non-Asian tourists. They prefer to stop in more clean, new bars which look more familiar to them and similar to what they are used to. We met the whole family running a small bar, they were very happy and really nice to us.
After that we went another round with the motorbike across the hills with only local people and macadam road. People looked at us with surprise. We were invited to stop by a lovely old couple who showed us their garden and gave us some typical fruits.
Further, we hiked stairs to the rice fields and small water streams. We continue from there and walked to one hilltop where we found a temple with a nice view. There were still remainings from last ceremony they had.
From there we made a short stop by big Buddhist temple on a lower hill. The building was packed with Nepali people, therefore we didn’t want to stay for long. It‘s vacations and celebration time here at the moment, so there is a lot of internal travelers and adventure seekers who want to complete their bucket lists going bungee jumping, hiking, paragliding and so on.
In the afternoon we decided that we have enough of fancy place, so we went to see how is camping here around. We found a perfect place, which we will describe more in the future. By accident we were approached by a guy named Ganesh, who invited us for a coffee near his home. There we met a lot of new people from Russia living here for over 40 years and a nice guy named Daniel. They run a businesses with flying dragons and balloons. Just when we were there, we saw one landing. It was a funny experience, everyone observing the enormous fire ball.
The sun here is very strong, even though winter season has started. Our faces got some color during the ride. We traveled around almost the full day, so reaching home to a big cozy bed was a nice scenario. It was a day full of adventure and nice people, we were very happy that we managed to explore so much.
During the night when Steffen was out with his new friends from Kathmandu, there was a quite strong earthquake, which woke Tamara up. Luckily, she is used to it so she was not so scared. As well here in Pokhara there was no damage like in other parts of the country.