Another early start but this time to do some 'Birdwatching'. Our usual guide had taken some people on a jungle walk and so we went with a different guide to look at some birds. We couldn't imagine seeing many more than we had seen on the canoe yesterday, especially when we were only going round the back-end of the hotel and it turned out that we were right. Another guide had taken the binoculors and so when Babu heard or saw a bird in the distance, he just showed us what we would have seen in the handy little book that he'd brought with him.
Waiting outside the hotel for our departure was a big lovely, spacious bus and when we asked, they told us that it was going to take us all the way to Pokhura. We settled on it and, for once, had space for both our asses and our bags. It wasn't very long-lived and they slung us out at the bus park about 10 mins down the road and made their merry to Kathmandu.
Our own bus was the crappiest bus on the wasteland and we had to wedge ourselves into yet another set of narrow seats. It was still a tourist bus and so there at least weren't another 15 people rammed into the aisle with bags bigger than our rucksacks, but unfortunately the seats were reclinable. This is normally not a problem when there's handy little knob underneath or a discrete handle behind your knees but since we both then had to spend the next 5 or more hours with an sharp metal stick digging into our more delicate regions. To make matters worse, the lady sat behind me instigated a battle of window wars which lasted the whole journey too.
On arrival at Pokhura bus station we doubtfully scanned the waiting touts and hotels reps for the guy from the hotel we'd booked as part of our National Park trip. Unsurprisingly there was no-one waiting. We did however, get approached a different hostel by a guy who was the mate of the owner of The Dharma Inn and so he arranged for a taxi to take us there for free. We expected them not to have even heard of us when we turned up but after a quick phone call we were settled into a rather nice room, with a bath, a TV and a balcony.
Matt had been wanting to try momos and was desperate for meat after his long stint of enforced vegetariansism and so we made the apparently famous Lhasa Tibetian Restaurant our first stop. My first surprise was that I like momos, which was unexected enough given their texture, but it also transpired that I liked buffalo momos better than the flavourless cheese and spinach ones that I ordered. I think I'll experiment in making them when I get back home unless Nic or Claire beat me to it with their baking skills (hint hint ladies!).
We wandered past the endless outdoor shops with convincing looking fake trekking brands and marvelled at the number of people wearing massive down jackets despite the fact it was actually quite warm. Not sure how any of them would have coped on the cold, long treks of the Annapurna.
We had a look around a variety of more affordable hostels, including a great looking one by the lake which was part a a bar and restaurant complex where all the seats were mini pagodas balanced over pools of koi carp and water lilies. Matt said it was 'too cool' but I insisted that I wanted to have a look at the cute little wooden shacks they had to let. They were about to shw them to us but when we asked about their availability they said they were full for the forseeable future. They were still going to let us have a poke around the rooms that somebody had locked and left, thinking that they were secure though!
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After looking round a number of good, bad, ugly and so high up a hill you wouldn't want to carry your rucksack up places, we settled on one that was very basic with a scary bathroom (the light not working in there was a bit of a blessing) but had a beautiful view over the lake and a very smiley boy running it.
We planned to spend the remainder of our evening enjoying the rooms facilities. We had high hopes for a bottle of rum and a game of cards, followed by a nice bath and a bit of crappy TV in bed. Unfortunately it started to rain, there was no electricity and no hot water so it was mostly just a tease. The rum did live up to expectations though and Matt was soon sound asleep.
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