Pokhara

May 11

I definitely got burnt yesterday. It didn't even occur to me to put sunscreen on. It wasn't too bad though. On my arms it turned into tan and just my shoulders were a bit red. I'm not sure if it will peel or not. I don't think the getting stranded part helped. A lot of us got pretty burnt.
Last night was pretty bad. For some reason our power wasn't working in our room even though it was supposed to be so it was sooo hot. The fan wouldn't even work. I'm not sure what happened because everyone else got their power back around 10pm. I think there have only been 2 hotels I have actually slept under the sheet. All the others it has been hot enough that I have slept on top of it.
They have load shading in Nepal everywhere we have been. That means we only have power during certain times of the day and there are certain times when it is off. It has always been on in the evening but usually goes off in the middle of the day. Sometimes even by early morning it is gone. I've gotten used to the power going out in the middle of something I'm doing. All of a sudden you're sitting on the toilet in a dark bathroom or something.
Elisabeth had really wanted to go back to K.C.'s for breakfast in the morning so we woke up earlier to do that. I just had a grilled cheese toast and a small cup of scrambled eggs. I don't know why but the grilled cheese here is so amazing.
We saw Nick at the restaurant when we arrived but he left shortly after that to go back and pack his bag. He basically had a hash brown with cheese on it for breakfast. He eats a lot of potatoes and noodles and rice.
After breakfast, which was quick and easy and we even paid within 5 minutes instead of 30 minutes, we headed back to the hotel to grab our bags and meet the rest of the group. We were meeting at 8:45am.
Z wasn't downstairs yet and Elisabeth said that he had told her if he wasn't downstairs by 9am to wake him up because they stayed up too late talking. She went to bang on his door and said he was coming and was awake.
Z had told us he would try to figure out a discount for the jeep safari. In the morning he was offering 300 off but Martina, Michael, Curtis, and Monica wanted 500 each off. In the end, they ended up giving us the 500 off but it was after a lot of debating. I think the hotel manager was just ready for us to get out of there. We had already caused enough trouble.
I had done laundry the day before trough the hotel. 3 pairs of pants and 4 shirts. It was 25 rupees per piece of clothing so I paid 175 for everything. Just a little over $2. When I opened the bag in the morning though, I had someone else's pants and I was missing a pair of my capri black pants. Luckily, Elisabeth recognized the shorts as being Curtis' and he had my pants so it was an easy trade.
Once we squared away our bills with the hotel (we wrote down everything we bought there for the entire stay including food, beverages, park permits, etc.) we piled into a small truck with the open bench style seating again (our bags were in the back of a pick up truck that followed us). We were dropped off at a "bus station" which was really just a dirt space where 2 buses were parked. Our bus which was going to Pokhara and another bus which was going to Kathmandu.
We all watched carefully as our bags were loaded onto the top of the bus and we piled in and I believe we all passed out for the remainder of the bus ride. Usually in the middle of the bus rides we stop somewhere to eat lunch. It is never amazing so I don't really feel like its worth talking about. I did however wake up with a huge bruise on my head because I was leaning against the window of the bus. It actually hurts a lot.
When we arrived in pokhara, we had to get off the bus, transfer out bags from the top of the bus to the top of 2 vans and then head to the hotel. It was maybe a 5 minute drive. The city was really clean.
On the bus for the little bit I was awake, I noticed that there are 4 different people working to operate the bus. One driver, one guy hanging out the door who would climb up on the top of the bus to put the bags up there and being them down, a guy with a cell phone and receipt pad who was yelling a lot, and another guy who just sat there. In the front of the bus there is a separate compartment that can be closed off where the driver sits and then there are a few benches for people to sit on. There was only one time when a family sat in there. Otherwise it was mostly these 4 people.
In Pokhara when we got there, we were assigned our rooms and then we had about 3 hours of free time. I really wanted to go paragliding so Elisabeth and I went out to compare prices. The hotel was offering paragliding for 8,600 rupees for 20-30 minutes. We thought we could probably find a better deal by bargaining.
We walked along the street, there is a lake right there as well which was nice, to try to find different paragliding companies. The streets were really clean and really white. We didn't have to try too hard to find different paragliding services. There are offices literally every block. We went to maybe 6 different shops and then we walked into one where the woman promised us she was offering the best price on the street. Up to this point we had most of the offers for 20-30 minutes around 8,000 but one place had offered 6,800. He wrote a price down that was in the 7,400 range and we told her someone else had offered us 6,800 and she thought about it for a moment and said okay, 6,500 rupees. So we took that. Elisabeth really wanted to do horseback riding and the woman offered it to her for 3,500 for a 5-6 hour trip that went up through the mountain to the world peace stupa and back. That was really cheap compared to all the other prices and she didn't want to go alone so I told her I would go with her. I didn't know if I really wanted to ride a horse for 5 or 6 hours but at least it would be pretty riding through the jungle.
We booked both trips and they said we would leave for paragliding at 9:30am and leave for horseback riding as soon as we got back from the paragliding. We put down a 3,000 rupee deposit for the paragliding and a 1,000 rupee deposit for the horseback riding.
We went in search of an ATM to take out more money to pay everything the next day. We went to probably 4 different ATMs and none of them were working. We started heading back to the hotel which was the opposite direction from where we were headed to find an ATM. Along the way we saw a bunch of people from our group and told them we had found the best price we thought we would be able to find and directed everyone else to the same place.
After that, we had to meet for dinner back at the hotel at 7pm. We went to caffe concertto which is a restaurant famous for their pizzas and the pizza was amazing. Solvei and i decided to split pizza and pasta. We had a pizza with pesto, yak cheese (whatever that is) and walnuts. It was called the nepalitaly. We also got a pasta that was similar but when it came out it just had zucchini pesto on it. So that was good but a little disappointing because there was supposed to be dried fruit and nuts and Parmesan on it as well. Paying our bill took way too long. Maybe 40 minutes ha! They put it all together so we all had to look at the receipt and calculate what we had and then add 10% tax. Normally in Nepal there ends up being 23% service charge and tax- it's like 10% and 13%. We still somehow were short on the bill by 750 rupees and Z didn't want to waste more time so he just paid for it. None of us were too happy with that and we tried to pay him back but he wouldn't let us.
A bunch of people went to the pub after that but 5 or 6 of us went back to the hotel. I needed to be up at 4am to be ready to see the sunrise on sarangkot by 4:30am so I went back and passed out. So many early mornings!!!!
I forgot to mention that here they pronounce rhinosaurus (I have absolutely no idea how to spell this word. Terrible) as rhino-saurus the saurus part like how you would say the full name of a dinosaur. It threw me off for the longest time. I knew what they were talking about but it didn't seem right and I couldn't figure out what was wrong for the longest time. Then Curtis said something about a dinosaur and I realized why it sounded strange. Kinda like leopard and retina in Budapest haha. Hilarious.