‘Home-Coming’

As I stepped out of the plane on the morning of 27 September, I felt the sense of ‘home-coming’ when the familiar crisp mid-morning breeze brushed against my face. Beyond the airport, the screeching sound of tyres, the incessant sounds of horns were all too familiar to me. I was overcome by the nostalgic feeling and was grateful my dream of returning could be realised. A wave of emotion overpowered me.

After lunch, we flew to Pokhara. We had a leisure evening, shopping around the town.

The next morning, we took a boat ride across the lake to the other side of town. Our guide, Krishna (we engaged the same guide from the previous trip) told us that, as a warming up exercise, we would trek up a ‘small’ hill to see a Buddhist temple. ‘We will walk slowly, nothing difficult about the trek. It will take only about an hour,’ Krishna told us. Well, the ‘small’ hill and ‘nothing difficult about the trek’ turned out to be more than a warming up exercise. And it definitely took us more than an hour. It was a rather hot day and we were all dying of thirst. Lucky for us, there were some local people selling drinks and cucumbers. What a welcoming sight! The cold coca-cola and the cool, juicy cucumbers were most refreshing. We sat under a big shady tree, slowly savouring the ‘hard-to-come-by’ treat.

On the way up, we met many local women carrying construction materials up the hill. We also saw many students, in their uniforms, taking boats across the lake. They then had to walk for ‘seem-like-endless’ journey to their schools. It’s a tough life out there!

Finally, we reached the temple. We were not allowed to go inside it, but we could hear the chanting of mantra and prayers coming from inside the building.

After a short rest and a few snapshots, we started to head back, stopping over at a Tibetan refugee camp on the way. Nothing really special about the place, save for the few stalls selling Tibetan curios.