Cheryl and Mike’s Adventure

Well, as you may have all noticed, Cheryl and Mike have been barely registering a pulse on our fledgeling blog, but there’s a perfectly legitimate reason for our collective flatlining. We’ve been busy, as well as the fact that both of us have come down with some sort of Nepali guk, and so we’ve been under the weather and have been trying to take it easy (not sick in a, uh, bad way, but more like your normal common cold stuff, which still sucks, perhaps more so when you’re overseas). Anyway, let’s recap:

When we last left you, we had just gotten back from our Trek, and both Cheryl and I resembled Will Ferrell during Ron Burgandy’s downfall scene in “Anchorman”, where he’s stumbling around bearded and guzzeling milk on a hot day. We showered (repeatedly, actually), shaved, cleaned out our ears and enjoyed a brief day in KTM, and then it was off on our overnight Whitewater Rafting Trip with a company called Ultimate Decents, one of the better co.’s in Nepal it seems. Completely local-run company. We took a 3 hour bus trip, with about 20 or so people/tourists from all over the world, to the Bhote Kosi, which is the steepest river which can be rafted in Nepal. It was absolutely incredible. The first day we more or less trained on a quieter stretch of the river, splitting up into 3 rafts. We had the main raft, with the head guide, a very cool and interesting guy named Indra (who, by chance, happens to be dating a girl from Jackson Hole, who just moved back over here a week or so to stay for the winter). After our training day, we headed up by bus again for about an hour to the Borderlands Resort, which is where our accomadations were for the evening. It’s a very neat resort, it was all in the woods and everyone stayed in these little bungalo/hut-things, and we had a great dinner/drinks in the outdoor dining area, very nice evening. The next day we began our trip, and it was hands down the most intense and fun rafting trip we’ve ever been on. Class 3, 3+, 4, 4+ plus rapids all the way, continuous rapids. Had a few, um, close calls, but all in all we made it safe and sound, and it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. After the bus ride back to KTM, we stayed in the city for about two days, before we decided to head out to our next destination, a smaller town/city called Pokhara, which is where we are now. Pokhara is a beautiful little area located by this huuuge lake called the Phewa Tal, sort of a Kathmandu-light, still some very touristy areas but nice, lots of shops, restaurants, etc. We’ve been staying in a really nice Hotel called the Temple Villa Inn, about 9 rooms which is basically run by this old man and his wife, and a younger guy who more or less manages everything, who are very nice and invited us to have home cooked dinner (Daal Bhat) with them last night! It was something, very traditionally Nepali, very interesting because half the time no one could understand what the other was saying as well. But we think that they like us, the food was plentiful, and they gave some very good (I thought)whiskey after dinner to help ‘settle’ our dinner. But, otherwise, we’ve been taking it easy more or less here in Pokhara, the first day we rented a canoe and paddled around on the lake for about an hour, yesterday we hired a guide to paddle us across the lake so we could hike up to this thing called the World Peace Pagoda, which is a Buddhist shrine/temple which was built by Buddhist Monks to promote world peace. It was about an hour hike up a pretty large hill, which gave us spectacular views of all of Pokhara (Annapurna Mtn. Range, also). Otherwise, we’ve been laying a bit low and trying to get over the colds we’re battling at the moment. However, today, we are going Paragliding (we couldn’t pass it up, it’s so ridiculously cheap here), Cheryl for the 1st time. We’re pretty excited, it’s pretty big around here and Paragliders from all over the world come here to work and guide trips. The views are suppossed to be incredible up there, so we’re both pretty psyched.

Well, that’s our quick recap for now, folks. We’re looking to get back on the internet this afternoon, so we can give a quick update then as well. Also, you all may have noticed a post entitled ‘pic’, we’re working on the picture thing and that was us testing, etc. It’s been challenging, sometimes the computers are ungodly slow, or the particular computers in the cafe’s don’t support the picture card, etc. Anyway, you may see more of stuff like that in the future, we’re hoping to get at least a few up there at some point. Send us you thoughts/comments and let us know how you are doing! Until later…

Cheers
Cheryl and Mike

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 18th, 2007 at 2:32 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.