Oh Hai!

“Four hundred. Five hundred and fifty for air-conditioned bus,” the lady hands me a pamphlet with a picture of a clean air-conditioned tourist bus and points to it. I was pleased. Finally, I thought, I get to travel within Nepal in style. I paid 3000 Rupees upfront for three return tickets to Pokhara.

Having lived in Kathmandu for three months, there’s no form of transport I haven’t gone in. Buses, micros, tempos, taxis, motorbikes, scooters and the bicycle. Each one a harrowing experience in itself.

The following morning, my parents and I caught a cab to Thamel to board our supposedly clean, air-conditioned tourist bus. Problem – the bus I was supposed to find at Tridevi Marg was not there. The office I bought my ticket from was not open. After some panicking for 5 minutes and a naggy backseat driver dad, we found our bus parked some distance down the road in front of Megabank.

I found my bus. It was clean. I was relieved. But my bliss was short lived. The conductor called another man, and brought me to another bus. It was old; the seats probably have seen better days and adorned brighter colours in its hey-day, but the words “TOURIST” still stand clearly on its windshield.

And then, I saw an open window.

“WAIT. This is an air-conditioned bus?” I asked the bus boy.

“Yes,” he replied.

I swallowed and kept quiet. After all, it was 7.30 in the morning and I did not have enough strength or brainpower to be making noise. My mother on the other hand, apparently had enough sleep and started throwing a tantrum.

“This is Nepal,” I hissed at her.

We later found out that there were no such thing as buses with real air-condition, but the “air-conditioned” buses were in way better condition than those without. (I’ve seen goats riding on the top of them before.)

A bunch of guys boarded the bus, and I was left to sit alone in the corner of the last row. Two hours into the bus ride, the men decide to chat with me. My parents are cautious travelers, especially my father, who dislikes revealing too much information to random strangers. “Don’t talk to strangers, don’t tell them too much,” my father tells me on various trips in different countries. As I have short hair and boyish-good-looks (and a thick oversized jacket on), the men mistake me for a boy. They ask me whether I have a girlfriend in Singapore, how old am I, so on.

I was rather amused. The tension of sitting with a row of men has dispersed. And I know they are not trying to be funny, Nepalese are interesting like that. They chat with foreigners, trying to extend some of their Nepali hospitality.

6 hours of winding roads, meandering rivers, endless paddy fields and two rest stops later, we reach Pokhara. It’s amazing how everything changes when one leaves Kathmandu behind. The scenery, the air, the people.

I didn’t find much struggle getting to my hotel on a taxi (I thought I had to deal with ridiculous taxi touts) and the driver was a nice English-speaking young chap whom we subsequently booked for a half-day tour of Pokhara for Rs. 2500.

I stayed at a little lodge called Mum’s Garden Resort, family run business that strived to make my stay there as enjoyable as possible. At $45 a night (room for three guests), the lodge was way better than any budget lodges we have stayed before in other countries for the same price. It was clean, well furnished, attached bathroom with hot water (very important in Nepal!) and included a full Western breakfast of eggs, toast, and tea.

The first thing to do on our list - watching the sunrise at Sarangkot.

We went back to the hotel for our breakfast. We left the rest of the day’s itinerary to our taxi driver, RC, who also drove us up to Sarangkot. First stop - Bat Cave!

I was too excited and scared to have taken any photos, so sorry there ain’t any visuals to illustrate how amusing and torturous the whole experience was.

“Come here, come here!” RC beckons me over. “This is the exit of the bat cave! Look, look! Someone is coming out now!”

It was there I witnessed the rock giving birth to two large sized middle aged Caucasian women. The hole looked like it couldn’t have been larger than a A3 sized paper. And yet, one after another, the women managed to wiggle their way out through the exit!

“How was it, ma’am?” I asked the first lady who made it out of the exit.

“Oh, not good. Not good at all,” she replied.

The second lady who just managed to wriggle out from the small exit, chuckled, and said, “I blame it on these!” and points at her double-Ds.

Thinking it can’t be that bad, I was like “Okay dai! Let’s do this!” The cave was a small bat cave, there was nothing much to be seen given the darkness, but that’s where the fun is. Getting around the cave with little light and stumbling around the rock formation to the exit.

“Okay, sure you want to go through the exit?” RC asks me.

“Sure! Why not. What about you guys?” I asked my parents.

My parents are over a century old with their ages added together but they were very sporting. My dad was scared, I could tell, but we went ahead with the adventure anyway.

We had to climb up a wall as tall as I was, then once up there had to climb up another wall that was up to my chest. These so called “walls” are all natural rock formations, so we had to struggle climbing up in the dark, grip onto rocks and get dirt smeared all over our hands and legs. Then once up that wall, I had to lie belly down on the narrow wall which only supported half the width of my body. My dad was pushing my leg from behind, and my guide, who went out before me, was pulling me out from the front.

So. That’s how it feels to be born out of a rock.

I look at my small army bag and my camera. It was completely covered in dirt and damp soil. Oh boy, I laughed, I do look like a true blue photojournalist covered in dirt and camera turned brown and all.

At the end of the short half day tour, we took a leisurely walk around Lakeside and Damside, went boating and just chilled out.

And that’s it, from my short weekend getaway at Pokhara.