Pokhara, Nepal

Hey Everyone,

How's it going? Well, after 3 months, I'm now on my own, Gerry left to go on a 12 day trek yesterday.

When we got to Kathmandu, we decided to rest for a while, cause after China, it felt like a vacation. We could order food in english, listen to Bob Marley and Sting (everywhere I've been, local bar and restaurant owners seem to think that that's all we like), eat western food (although we did stick to local stuff). So for 5 days we did nothing but stand in lines for visa extensions, trekking permits, relax.

After Kathmandu, we came here to Pokhara for a 5 day raft trip down the Kali Gandaki. The rafting started out like a jeep trip in Mongolia, The first day, about 10 minutes down the river, the supply raft wrapped itself around a rock, It took us three hours to get it free, half of the people on the trip had to go to across the river with a rope to help pull it free, Then maybe another 100 metres down, the frame popped of the supply raft (l guess weakened from being stuck in the rapids) and so some of our supplies started floating down the river.

All of us were down river from this accident, so all we saw were tomatoes and other stuff (fortunately no beer) floating by us, not a good sign. Also all the eggs were lost (and they were all stored in the same raft...). By the time this was straightened out, it was dark, so we set up camp in the dark, probably 250m from where we had put in that morning, I figured all we needed now to complete the day was rain, it rained. Then me and Gerry made the mistake of telling everyone our Mongolia trip, so then we were blamed as being bad luck, (even though me and Gerry knew that it was the other people on the Mongolia trip who were bad luck.) But the next day more supplies were sent down, we got a new supply raft driver (?) and everything was fine after that.

The 4th day was pretty calm on the river, so I got to try kayaking for a couple hours. It was way fun, I got addicted, so now I'm doing a kayak trip from Nov 1 - 5. The first day is on a lake where we learn stuff, then we head down the Seti River. On the last day there's Class 3s, that should be fun.

On the 5th day we had a couple Class 4+'s, ours was the only raft to go over. This was after the night before when we bragged that we were the only raft (out of 4 on the trip) not to have any swimmers yet. We called our raft Mr. Wolf, cleaning up after everyone's messes, Then we flipped. Oh well.

A couple days ago I climbed up Sarangkot (about 1800m) to stay the night, cause it hs amazing views of the Annapurnas (mountain range) and of Pokhara by sunset and sunrise. It was the only cloudy morning I‘ve seen here so far. Coincidence? I'll tell you about coincidence. Gerry carried around a set of darts for 3 months from Germany to here, and finally decided to get rid of them in Kathmandu, cause we had used them exactly zero times. The next day here in Pokhara we found a bar with a really nice dart board.

Oh yeah, before I came to Nepal, I knew nothing about it, I figured I'd just do a trek or two. Now I’ll be here for around 45 days, and do everything but trek.

I need sports news! How are the Leafs doing? Better than Montreal?
How are the Raptors doing? Did Chicago keep their team together for another season?

Big Mac Combo Update:
None here. No chains at all of any kind (except DHL express)

Anyways, I'm just hanging out here for a couple days until my kayaking begins. Life's rough.

Love Eric (or Eric)