Pokhara
My last full day in Pokhara, I went up to the Kedareshwor Shiva Temple to conduct a brief farewell and thanksgiving puja. I had been there ahead going to Muktinath and upon returning too. The temple location is really beautiful, being set upon the banks of Lake Phewa, opposite lush tropical forested hills. It is […]
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 […]
It was way back in June when I first arrived into Kathmandu, before making my way to Pokhara, which has been the base for my several travels since. Well do I remember in my earliest posts, describing the scene from my balcony at Greenhills, of the fields being plowed ready for the rice sowing. The […]
The monsoon has been unrelenting this year, pretty much since I arrived in Nepal, certainly in Lakeside Pokhara. Happily, however, there have been occasional respites and it’s important to be ready to take full advantage of these as you never know when there might be another. The skies clear and the sun shines and hopes […]
I often see them running along the edges of the paddy fields here and have spent sometime trying to identify them properly, but whether they’re the Indian Gray Mongoose, or the Small Asian Mongoose, they wreak the same havoc amongst the villagers’ chickens. A few nights back, one checked out the contents of the tea […]
It’s now three days since I returned from Sarankgot and life has predictably settled back down into much the same rhythm it had before I left. But I’m hopeful I can manage the challenges of commune living with a little more grace and detachment. The folk here, at least up here on the floor where […]
At last I think the weather has changed, or certainly is changing. Following days of intense rains and nightly electric storms wreaking widespread havoc and destruction, building to a crescendo with a night long thunder storm like an overhead bombardment, then a full day of torrential rain, yesterday, there was a gradual easing off and […]
The hillsides echo now to shouts from men ploughing the rice paddies, navigating the teams of oxen along the narrow field lines flooding with water. Women crouch plucking the young rice plants from the nursery plots ready for replanting in the fields. It is pouring with rain, and everything is soaked. The monsoon season marks […]