Adventures in Pokhara

We ended up hiring bikes for a couple of days to explore Pokhara and surrounds. First day we followed the road which sort of ran beside the lake. We were actually looking for "Devi Falls" which we had a lot of trouble finding due to the fact its not what we thought. Eventually after seeing a sign amongst some little shops saying "Welcome to Devi Falls" we decided that this must be it - maybe - Anyhow we preceded to park our bikes when this guy came out of his shop and tried to charge us for parking on the dirt in front of his shop. I became a little annoyed and said no way are we going to pay for a piece of dirt......so we moved onto the next bit of dirt!! We then got chatting to a young 18 year old guy called Raj from another shop. He explained to me that this was pretty normal and it was just another way of making some money. He asked us if we would like him to give us a bit of history and a guided tour around Devi Falls and the village for a small fee. We accepted after negotiating a price, as his English was really good and he seemed like a nice kid. Just to put you in the picture.........at first we were not sure if Raj was a girl or a guy......his voice was very high pitched with a slight American accent.......very similar to that of Michael Jackson. His English teacher is an American guy so obviously he was picking up on the accent. The tour he gave us was really informative. He advised us to take a look at Devi Falls from below the ground in a cave called Gupteshwor as we would get a much better view. He was right - it was incredible. You would not have even thought there was a cave existing under all that chaos above......sacred cows ambling along the main roads, local villagers going about there business and the main road just meters above us. After taking us through the cave, Raj escorted us through one of the many Tibetan Refugee camps in Nepal. This particular camp was home to 2000 refugees who were very happy to have fled Tibet over the years. It was a very interesting community for us to have had the privilege of visiting.

As we said our goodbyes to Raj we set off back to downtown Lakeside..............well we eventually got there on dark, after getting lost and not having a clue where we were. Brad came good with directions (funny how he is very good at directions in foreign countries........but in Perth not all that good!!hehe). Getting lost in these places is part of the adventure. The children in the streets were so friendly and were waving at us and yelling out "Namaste" (hi) all the time.