Bandipur-Pokhara Tour

October 23, 2008 — Pramit

Date: 17th October, 2008

“Lets go to Bandipur tomorrow” – the starting phrase for the whole tour. Me, Nabin and Rajan met at Basantapur and all out of a sudden, I jumped in with this dialog. “Ok” was their instant reaction. So there were three of us ready for the tour. Now we needed to collect more guys. Sabin was at the bed due to kidney stone, Narendra couldn’t miss his office. Santosh also had some work at home. Dinesh was GREed. Last one was Gaulochan who also instantly agreed. “So lets meet at 7 am tomorrow at Kalimati, I’ll return from office in half time” and we all departed.

Date: 18th October, 2008

Alarms rings at 1:45 am. Its office time, and yes the tour day. I felt so lazy that I gave baal to office and slept again. Woke up again at 5:30, got prepared for the tour. Dad dropped me at Kalimati. Me, Rajan and Nabin headed for Kalanki. We waited for Gaulochan there for 15 minutes before he arrived. At Kalanki, the conductor brothers almost carried us into their vehicles.

But luckily, we found a nice big tourist coach, just 250 bucks to Dumre. There were just 4 tourists, 4 of us, 1 conductor and 1 driver in the whole damn coach. Wow it was already fun. We departed from Kalanki at 7:45 am.
After about 3 and half hour on the coach, we reached Dumre at about 11:15am. When we went to empty our bladder, we say “Touch me not” plant. Nabin discovered the plant there while he was urinating. His urine had touched the plant. I think the plant didn’t like his urine, and contracted. A big spider (at least the biggest one I had ever seen for real) caught our site. We showed the snap of the spider to Rajan who was comfortable with empty bladder.

The only type of vehicle from Dumre to Bandipur was Mahindra. Luckily, we got lil better seat behind the driver’s seat. It was not so comfortable though (4 of us in a 3 person seat). An old woman who seated on the driver’s seat for a while was a moment of fun and we didn’t miss a chance to click the camera of the moment. We reached Bandipur in half an hour from Dumre. At the entrance was a map of Bandipur. I took a snap of the map and started our journey according to the map. We went to several places there, but the place we enjoyed the most was on old ruined house which was not one of the attraction places though. We had planned to have a night stay at Bandipur. But the idea of visiting Pokhara too stroked our minds. Nabin and Rajan had never been to Pokhara. But I had visited Pokhara just few days back and was not so interested in the plan. But they were very eager to go there as well. This idea made us leave for Pokhara as early as possible. So we returned from Bandipur at around 4:30 pm. The vehicle from Bandipur to Dumre was the worst among all other vehicles in the entire tour. We got a seat at the back of Mahindra just behind a speaker. The seat was hard enough to built pain in the ass. And the song that flew from the speaker was a pain in the ears. The sound was so irritating that we had to cover the speakers with our hands. :P

We reached Dumre and took a bus to Pokhara at around 5pm. And guess what we had no seat for us in the bus. So we made the hood of the bus our seat. There were 2 foreigners (French ladies) on the hood before us. Ooh it was chilly up there. Thank god I had a jacket and also an extra jacket and a cap that I gave to Rajan. Poor Nabin didn’t had any jacket, nor cap. He only has 2 T-shirt with him which he wore. As time passed, it got more and more cold. Me and Nabin covered our heads with scarfs. Nabin even wrapped a handkerchief around his head to cover his ears, that made him look like a “Sheikh” of some kind. Since I had 2 scarfs, with me, I used the other one to cover my nose and mouth. Now I was looking like a terrorist with one scarf on the head, one on the face an goggles on the eyes, with no part of my entire head visible. I requested Gaulochan to take a snap of me with this getup. The 2 ladies were so interested in my getup that they burst into laughter and took a snap of mine and Nabin. I got my first experience to sleep on the hood. I almost dozed off. I already started having attack while on the hood. So I was quiet for sometime until I reached Pokhara.

We reached Pokhara at 6:30 pm to be surrounded by the hotel brokers, each tempting us to take to their hotel. Since I had visited Pokhara few days back, I knew where exactly we were going to stay. So we took a taxi and headed to Hotel Nepal at Hallan Chowk, Lake Side. By the time, I already had a terrible headache and there was loadshedding. So I slept as soon I reached the hotel room. I didn’t even take dinner that evening. Frens bought biscuit n juice for me. When I woke up at around 10 pm, my headache was somewhat under control. So me and Nabin went out to Fewa lake. We bought cards n played till midnight.

19th October, 2008

I woke up at 5 in the morning. After refreshing ourselves, me and Nabin went out to buy a pair of slippers for Nabin. But the cute girl there was not in mood for bargain early in the morning. So he didn’t buy those slippers. We confirmed the bikes on which we would travel that day. I got red Enticer for myself at R. 350, and a brand new Apache for Rajan at Rs. 450. Me and Nabin also bought hats for us. Our journey started at 10 am after having our bikes tested.

Our first destination for the day was Devi’s Fall. Since it was first visit for Rajan and Nabin, they were pretty amazed at the site. Since it was tourist season, we could see a crowd there. But the water level had decreased since my last visit. There was a wish pond there. We dropped some coin there and with few coins dropped, all 4 of us managed to land the coin safely on the statue inside the pond. We left from there and had our breakfast (or lets say lunch since it was already about 12 noon).

From there we were heading to “World Peace Stupa”, our second destination, when my Enticer went mad. I just wouldn’t start. I tried everything I could to keep the Enticer moving, but in vain. Finally I had to call the bike vendor to report the problem. He was on his was to Devis fall when the Enticer started off. So I again called the vendor to inform about the situation. But he said he would be there to have a look. We waited for him. In few minutes he was there, inspected the bike. The mike was fine. So we headed for the 2nd destination.

My oh my, the road there. It was like a road to hell. That too on Enticer. Definitely Enticer is not a god choice for such roads. I missed my Pulsar that moment. Poor Nabin had to get off the bike time to time since Enticer would not pull us both. Still, the bike couldn’t take us to the top of the hill because there was no path for bikes up. So we had to park the bike and walk uphill. Fortunately, it was only 10 minutes climb from there. The stupa itself is spectacular. And the view from there, specially the Fewa lake from there looked mind blowing. We could see parachutes flying from Sarangkot and landing on the side of Fewa lake. Rajan was already thinking about the path that we had to return, the hell way.

Next stop was Mahendra cave. On the way, we saw a girl riding pulsar. We almost followed her when we realized that we were on the wrong track, shits! We turned around and caught the right track. I didn’t want to go to Mahendra cave because I had already visited there and it was not so exciting. But since Nabin requested as it was his first time, we went there, had some snaps and returned. Gaulochan bought a map of Pokhara there. Next was the Bat Cave. It was near to Mahendra Cave. We needed a guide and an emergency light before we could go in the cave. I asked my friends to remove their bags, googles and to be careful with the mobile phones at the exit of the cave because I knew the difficult part there. Guys were excited at from the entrance itself. This time, the cave was full of bats. Now came the exit part, the most difficult part. Rajan was the first to exit. With much difficulty, he managed to escape out of the cave. Then it was my turn. It wasn’t so difficult for me as it was my 2nd time. Gaulochan and Nabin took off their shirts and got through with difficulty. Rajan took pictures of us at the exit, but no one was there to take his picture because he was the first one to exit. So, he pretended to be exiting from the cave to take a snap.

From there, we targeted for Begnas Lake. I had told the guys about the hill, which I thought was Bahun Danda, but actually was Sundari Danda, from where one could see Begnas Lake on one side and Rupa Lake on the other. I myself had never been there but I had been told about he beauty of the view. Nabin was interested in this but Rajan was not. Although we set off for Begnas Lake, Nabin and I were interested in the hill. On the way to Begnas Lake, we asked how far was the hill? We were excited at the locals reply who said that it would take only about 45 minutes to go there. So we made up our mind “we are going there”. Half of the road of the hill was fine. But then came the difficut part. A disastrous road. Rajan was already cursing the hill as his balls were untolerable due to the bike. It was already late while going to the hill. It would get dark while returning. So we didn’t have any time to spend on the hill. But the view really spectacular as described. We threw stones to see if it could reach the Rupa Lake just for fun. At least Nabin’s stone made a noise, hitting a tree nearby. While returning, Rajan had problem at the road. Die to the gravels, his bike slipped and didn’t move forward. We lifted the bike to where there were no gravels and then only we could move forward. Rajan was really furious at having visited this place. He was so furious that he alone went we dont know how far. Nabin and Gaulochan had to walk for some time. Little far away, Rajan was standing with the bike, getting angry. When we reached Begnas Lake, it was already dark. IT was 6pm already. I was afraid that the bike vendor would call at my home like the last time. We didn’t boating there. We just took some snaps there. My bike again started the problem there. But upon few tries and refueling, the problem was solved. We hurried back to Pokhara. We reached the bike shop at 7pm, returned the bike and went to our hotel. Most tired ones were Rajan and Gaulochan. Gaulochan’s bum was really hurting. Gaulochan’s bum was really in a bad shape. So we took some rest at our room and got refreshed. After some rest, we went for a stroll. We had some sausage and “Jhir”. Damn, Nabin didn’t like it and gave it to stray dog. But according to the locals, we missed the “Jhir” at damn side as we were leaving the next day. On the way back to hotel, we bought about 1 kg meat items,  kodo and beer for playing cards at the night. After a very chilly dinner at the hotel, we were set up to play cards. Everyone was so full and so tired. Unwillingly, we played cards, Rajan even dozzed off while playing cards. We had to wake him up saying “ye uuth! tero paalo aayo”. Such was everyone else’s condition. It was too much for us to play in such condition. We we quit and all went to sleep.

20th October, 2008

It was 7am when I got a call from Biju. We all were sleeping till then. One by one, all got out from the bed. It was our last day at Pokhara. The only place left to visit was Fewa Lake. We had already decided we would be boating on a paddle boat. So we hired a 4 person paddle boat for Rs. 300 an hour. We didn’t hire a driver.

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