04-12 Pokara

View of Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Machapuchre from Fish Tail Lodge

12.04.18, Pokara

We were collected early in the morning in the hotel grounds and our minibus was piled high with all the luggage. There followed long day of driving from 8.15 until 18.00 with about 2 hours of stops including one for a nice lunch at a lodge by a river. The roads were not good and there were lots of Indian type (TATA) lorries resulting in traffic jams particularly in the hilly parts. Our guide must have thought it was too long since he arranged with Imbach for us to fly back to Kathmandu after Chitwan.

Again it was cloudy in the afternoon and we arrived at the hotel just as the rain started. Transfer to the famous Fish Tail Lodge across the river flowing into the lake at Pokara was made using the hotel raft pulled on a rope. Later one could see stars and we knew it should be clear the next morning. We were all getting up for sunrise (5.45) to watch the dawn light striking the mountains across the lake. After breakfast we would have a short drive to the start of the trek and the first stage would also be fairly short walking.

This was the last day in civilisation but I hoped that wifi connections would still work on the trek, at least in some of the lodges maybe every second day. In the evening we had to repack for the trek, having been given brand new trekking bags and down sleeping bags. The bags they had given us were really much too big though for our short trek.

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