Travel Day 1055 – Pokhara to Kathmandu, NEPAL
It was finally an Active Travel Day again and after spending almost a month in the Pokhara area, I was on the move back to Kathmandu…
Bus stop while overlooking the River
As I had noticed on my bus ride to Pokhara before, it was off-season and most of the tourist buses were only half full, leaving me thinking that the best way to save money would be avoiding pre-booking a bus ticket from a travel agent. Instead, going straight to the bus stand in Damside Pokhara seemed to be the logical approach since tickets could be easily bought at the bus itself. The additional thought was to also walk to the bus stand instead of taking an overpriced taxi early in the morning…
While my thoughts were definitely good and it really turned out to be the cheapest possible solution, the walk to the bus stand was actually a whole lot longer than I remembered. It wasn’t really a big deal since after all my trekking I was actually used to walking for many hours at a time, but for some reason every single taxi driver was totally convinced that it was not possible for me to walk the entire distance and kept bothering me. But some 30 minutes walking through a deserted Pokhara later, I found myself standing in front of about 25 tourist buses at the Damside bus stand…
Deserted Pokhara early in the Morning
How to choose the best possible bus seemed to be the only real challenge, but as it turned out, all the bus companies charged the exact same price anyway, 500 rupees, and so I simply picked the bus that seemed to be in the best shape of the mere lot. But what kind of nice and new bus I picked, I really only found out once we moved and the bus-boy kicked in one of the latest Bollywood movies in Hindi and on full volume. So the usually long ride all of a sudden felt even longer and more painful than expected…
But at least I got to see the nice landscape and the green mountains along the road again and of course we also made the unavoidable food stops at some overpriced tourist restaurants along the way. One of them was luckily situated overlooking the river and actually made for a really nice place to sit down for a bit and escape the roasting heat of the bus. And finally after all the Bollywood movies, all the winding roads and all the heat in the bus, we made it back to Kathmandu by the afternoon…
Green Mountains as seen from the Bus
Strangely enough but for me, arriving in Kathmandu felt like coming home again, even if I had been for one entire month. But I was staying at the same hotel and in the same room as before, plus I was talking to the same people as well as going to the same restaurants. I guess when one normally lives a life without routine, a little bit of familiarity all of a sudden can give a great sense of homeliness. But however I was looking at it, the bottom line was that I was actually quite happy to be back in Kathmandu, even if it was just for one night…
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