SomethingSuitablySharp alliteration, neuroscience and sea otters.

Day 5: Poo Status = OK still

It feels like I've been here for months...so much stuff has happened in the past few days. And yay, not sick yet!

We spent our last day in Kathmandu visiting this town about 40mins taxi away called Bahktapur. It's like a smaller and more authentic Kathmandu with it's narrow streets and alleys, it's smiley children running up to you and yelling "HELLO, HOW ARE YOU!?" and of course the sometimes nice smells and other vibrancy. They charge some stupid $10 USD fee to get in to the main square (essentially the whole city) so Dave and I snuck through random side streets to avoid the guard post. This was fine, until an official came up to us a few hours later and asked for our ticket - so we claimed ignorance and left the "pay area" for a bit then snuck back out!

We travelled by bus to Pokhara which was an OK 6 hour trip - it was a tourist bus so no constant stopping and overcrowded craziness (probably will have enough of that in India). Met up with the others (found them surprisingly easily on the other side of the road) and celebrated my birthday!

Pokhara is to Kathmandu like what the Coromandel towns are like to Auckland - more relaxed etc. It's a cool place, although the part we're staying is quite touristy - luckly it's not peak season.

We had a crazy day today - so much stuff, it was awesome though. Hired motorbikes and rode up a mountain near Pokhara for early morning views of the Himalayas and the general Pokhara valley. It took about an hour and there were quite a few hairy moments on those windy roads. Words simply don't do justice to the vista. I don't have time at the moment but I'll crank up some pics soon on flickr. Then we went to some bat caves which had zero bats but was a cool climbing cave - got dirty and felt like I'd had an adventure. Then we went to some other caves (biggest in asia apparantly) and this mint waterfall. A few other things inbetween too.

Ran out of time on this one - we've off to Chitwain national park tomorrow to see us some tigers, rhino etc. in the wild - 7 hours of bus ride away. Then after a few days there we'll move on to India probably. Peace.