Peaceful Pokhara

We decided to spend the middle of our week in Pokhara, about 200 kms away from Kathmandu.  We took a bus from Kathmandu and it took a bit over 6 hours to get there, with stops for breakfast, lunch and a burst tyre!  Pokhara is the base for trekkers to the Annapurna Range, which contains 3 of the 10 highest mountains in the world.

Heading up to the Himalayas we caught our first glimpse of snow covered mountains in the distance.
We arrived in Pokhara mid afternoon and walked down to the Phewa Lake for something to eat.  We returned there for sundowners as well!  The lake is really beautiful.

The following morning I got up early to look at the sunrise.  It was spectacular to see the high mountains from the roof of the hotel which gradually turned from blue to pink as the sun came up.

We decided to walk by the lake after breakfast and then catch a taxi up to the World Peace Pagoda on the hill.  We first walked to the Kedareswar Mahadev which was beside the lake in a small park.

Even though we took a taxi up to the World Peace Pagoda there was still a bit of a climb at the end.   We had visited another Shanti Stupa before when we were in Leh (Ladakh).  The aim is to build 100 of these around the world. This is number 71 and was completed in 1999.

From there we walked down to the lake.  It takes about 30 - 40 minutes to get right down to the bottom of the hill and then we had to wait for someone to come across with a rowing boat to get us back to Pokhara.  I'm glad we decided to walk down - not up!  The rowing boat stopped at another small temple on an island in the lake, the Varahi Mandir.

We wandered back to the lake again for sunset - if you look carefully you can see the Shanti Stupa on top of the hill.

At times it got quite cloudy - so we had planned to go up to a viewpoint to watch the sunrise, but as it was cloudy we didn't go.  Generally, though, the views were lovely.