During the biggest national festival of Dassain, this past October, my brother and I hit the highways of Nepal. (Being a Buddhist, and NOT a Hindu, my family and I really don’t celebrate the festival.) For me, it was the first time I braved our highways, which are filled with our out-of-control traffic and poorly maintained roads and infrastructure — such as the bridge in Mugling — among other things. (You can find more about that in the blog post On The Road…Not Taken…Before…In Nepal.)
Our first stop was Besisahar, the gateway to Annapurna Circuit, the most popular trekking route in Nepal. It was on the way that I passed the Mugling bridge. My first and last visit to Besisahar — what used to be a small village then — was also in October, though back in 1997, to do the Circuit. It is a decent sized town now.
We stayed at a hotel with a swimming pool and a water fountain adorned with a mermaid statue surrounded by dolphins!
The view from the hotel room in the morning was spectacular.
The plan had been to continue on to Ghale Gaun from there but we ended up going to Pokhara instead.
In Pokhara, I visited a number of places including my usual: Sarangkot (to greet the Annapurna Mountain range). Sarangkot is a small hill from where you can get excellent views of the Annapurna Mountain Range. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see it because of bad weather. But the structure below caught my eye when I was there.
I also spotted an old car, the kind of which used to ply the streets of the city when we used to live here. An old Toyota Corolla that was brought into the city in the fifties and sixties and were the only cars around for a long time!
I also paid a visit to the street where we used to live before we moved to Kathmandu. I discovered that pretty much every house in the neighborhood had been rebuilt except the two we had lived in!
Next stop was Tansen, a small town on a hill South-West of Pokhara.
There, we saw the biggest Trident in Asia!
The shots used to create the panorama of the Annapurna mountain range at the top was taken from the temple.
The town also has the largest gate in the country!
Next stop, Lumbini, the birth place of Sidhartha Gautam, the historical Buddha. Having read about the different monasteries built in Lumbini in homage to the Buddha, I was curious to see what I have always referred to as our “Disney Land,” albeit a religious one!
And somewhere in the Southern plains, near Lumbini, I came across this.
There you have it!
