After a quick breakfast, Ang arranged a boat ride across the lake and a hike to the Peace Pagoda on the top of the hill there. Built by Japanese Buddhists, the pagoda overlooks lake, town, Dhaulagiri, and Annapurnas. As our first hike, it was a lesson on how slick wet rock and clay could be. We would learn this more painfully later – but I’m getting ahead of the story. There were some Germans hiking up ahead of us, so when they came in view (of course) we picked up the pace to show them what we were made of. USA! USA! This behavior continued for the boat ride back, as Ang and Josh took over rowing from the boat people and more or less raced the two boats back to town. Remarkably, no one got wet or had to finish the trip swimming, but the boat people looked nervous!
NOTE: we are now at about 800m elevation, down from the last cycling pass at 5200m. That is a drop of about 14,500’. Pokhara is similar to Hawaii, with flowering trees, high humidity, and very comfortable nights. Tshirts, shorts, and sandals are the local tourist mode, rather than fleece, down sleeping bags, and getting no air when we “breathe”.
We spent the afternoon shopping, swimming, and making sure that the beer we found in Kathmandu was available here and not degraded by the trip.
