My time in Nepal is approaching its end. On Tuesday I am due to fly back to Kathmandu, ahead of leaving the country.
As usual when you are confronting the end of a period of time spent anywhere, you get many flashbacks to different times and experiences. So, the first two months were spent in Greenhills guesthouse up a mountain road some distance from Phewa Lake, with fine views over the forested hills, and the giant statue of Shiva in the distance, overlooking us all. My posts then were all about sitting out the monsoon (which has pretty much defined my stay in Nepal) and watching the passing of the days from my balcony, the village people tending their fields, the mongooses playing hide and seek with the chickens and occasional visits further afield, when I went first up to Sarankgot, then further afield to Tadapani and Ghandruk. I had scarcely seen the mountains at all then, as day succeeded day with nothing but dense clouds everywhere.
The second stage has been down by the lake side itself, a bustling area of tourist shops, restaurants and cafes. For weeks the area was nearly empty, there being few visitors at all owing to the impact of the pandemic on travel. Now, since returning from Muktinath, you see foreign visitors everywhere, itself a bit of shock, and also large numbers of Nepali and Indian people on vacation. The place has come alive and feels very different to the way it did when I was first here.
There are generally mixed feelings about anywhere and no less here. There have been good times and times which felt more difficult. The trip up to Mustang and Muktinath, in the end, have proved to be the defining goal of my time here, and why I came, although at the beginning and for a long time I had no real sense of any higher objective, beyond wanting to go up into the mountains.
From my hotel balcony here on Lakeside, I have watched a different set of neighbours about their daily lives, still pretty much defined by the traditional agricultural cycles of harvesting, ploughing and planting, even here in the urban centre. Take away the many hotels and guesthouses everywhere and indeed all you would be left with would be a relatively small town of people living in the age old ways, as Pokhara, and especially this district Lakeside, is really a city of hotels and restaurants and little else. So, after watching the maize being harvested, and then the ploughing with oxen, yesterday I watched my neighbours planting potatoes, another Andean native to have become a staple crop in the Himalayas.
I have finished my website and published it and I have now applied for a new visa to return to India, and from there, a whole new stage of the Pilgrimage which is, in fact, my life. Time moves on …
