Taking In Nepal

After spending a couple of days in Hong Kong (which is a really great city) and 36 hours in Kathmandu (which must be the one of the worst places on the face of this earth) and then surviving a 5 hour bus ride where I had to close my eyes for most of it, I arrived in Pokhara, Nepal.

Nepal is interesting. It is a lot more “Indian” than I ever thought it would be and it certainly feels different from any place I've ever visited before. Things are cheap here – you can easily get a hotel room for under $10 US and have a really great meal for $5. Unfortunately the power and internet is out for a lot of the day and a hot shower seems to be a luxury. The air isn't the cleanest and the Nepalese seem to have incorporated spitting as part of their culture. It's pretty gross considering the irony, as the shopkeepers have an incredible sense of pride in taking care of their storefronts, sweeping the streets, dusting their inventory and making sure everything is spotless. But then they spit a big loogie on the sidewalk and suddenly the immaculate feel to their storefront disappears.

The people for the most part are very nice, but are extremely aggressive when it comes to selling you pretty much anything. You can't walk 5 feet down the streets of Pokhara without being asked if you want a cab ride, a hotel, or to buy a knock off North Face jacket, or even some hash or weed!

Yesterday was my first time flying here in Asia and I had a really great flight. After four months of not flying and having a bit of an off-season in terms of my attitude towards paragliding, that flight definitely rekindled my interest in flying.

It was really great meeting up with our pilot group from Canada and going for a fly together. We didn't go XC (unless you count 5k's as XC) but bobbing around a hill in a new part of the world with people whose company you enjoy is a pretty fun time to me.

With today's flight, I got nice and high right away and without my Canadian buds, I crossed one of the valleys and tried to fly that range there. It was funny because I felt kind of smug at one point before the crossing, out-thermalling a couple Boom 5's and feeling rather confident, until I crossed over to the other side and couldn't find lift for the life of me. Suddenly, all the gliders I was once above, schooled me just about to the ground. Luckily, I made a low save and did some ridge soaring for a bit until I made a classic beginner's mistake – I did one too many 360's and suddenly found myself behind the ridge and not very high – ooooh, how amateurish!

Anyway, I flew away as fast as I could from the ridge on the rotor side, flying through some rotor sink, but it didn't end up being too bad. I landed in an already harvested terraced farm field as three ladies looked on. After landing, they immediately greeted me with the warm Nepalese greeting of “Namaste”. and helped me pack my glider. My boyfriend landed with me shortly and after saying our goodbye's to the nice ladies, two young girls came and walked us to the main road where we could catch a bus. The one girl spoke a bit of English and I enjoyed asking her simple questions as she held my hand and guided me towards the road.

We had perfect timing as we waved down the bus immediately and we climbed onto the roof with our gliders.

My god, that must have been the most terrifying bus ride of my life! There were low powerlines hanging everywhere, and we ended up constantly ducking until I finally gave up and laid down uncomfortably on the bus roof as round metal bars dug into my back. After 15 or 20 minutes of this, we spotted some taxis and got off the bus and went back to our hotel. I would argue that my boyfriend and I were almost decapitated and electrocuted during our bus ride, but he thought it was only slightly wild, so you decide.

In a couple of days we are going on a 4 day guided paragliding trek to do some flying. I am really looking forward to it – great flying, great people, and 11,000 kilometers from home!