A Little Taste of Heaven

One of the greatest treasures of Nepal is a once very well hidden secret deep within the Seti Gandaki Valley that some once claimed was the elusive Shangri-La. Pokhara Valley is an astounding natural beauty located in central Nepal, renowned as a heavenly retreat, laced by the Phewa Lake to the south and crowned by the Annapurna mountain range of the Himalayas to the north. After my initial visit to Gaindakot, I spent a few days having a little taste of this heaven.

Pokhara Valley has much to offer to the explorer. During my first full day there, I visited one of four Tibetan refugee camps. Nearly 300,000 refugees fled Tibet when it was annexed by China and have settled in camps that have become well-developed settlements. They have also found their niche in the tourism industry that generates most of Pokhara’s revenues and attract tourists to their carpet weaving centers and open markets for Tibetan goods. Other attractions that I visited are Devi’s or David’s Falls and the Mahendra and Gupteswor limestone caves.








The best view of the Annapurna range can be had from the mountainside village of Sarangkot, located 1600 meters above sea level. At 4:30 one morning, I hired a car to drive me through the dimly lit streets of Pokhara city up to this viewpoint. As I waited atop Sarangkot with a herd of other viewers, I was caught completely off guard by the freezing cold that I was entirely unprepared for. Several Sarangkot inhabitants had set up stalls just outside of their shanty homes to sell knitted gloves and scarves and wool blankets, but I refrained from making any more purchases that I would have had to haul back to Kabul in a few days’ time. But, more distracting than the temperature was the breathtaking view of the snow-capped Annapurna peaks, laying dormant, awaiting the first touch of the morning sun’s rays. In the middle of the range was its star, the Machapuchare peak, which means ‘fish tail’ in Nepali because of its twin peaks. As the sun made its way up into the horizon, I doubt there was a single witness around me whose senses were not aroused by this divine display.





From atop Sarangkot later that day, I took the plunge over Phewa Lake as the balloon of my paraglide kept me afloat. Though the view was striking, I regret to say that my vulnerability to motion sickness took its toll, forcing a slightly earlier landing than planned. By the evening, I decided to test this vulnerability again and hired a boatman to row me and a friend around Phewa Lake. During that hour, we visited the famous Bahari temple in the middle of the lake before observing the sun make its way down the other end of the Pokhara horizon.