Children Unite: Dark mountains fringed in pink

I got up at around five am and wandered up to a small hill on the outskirts of the village. I sat there and watched the silhouettes of the Himalayas starting to catch the sun. This was the most beautiful part of the day for me; dark mountains fringed in pink. It became hazy afterwards and the mountains slowly disappeared. But it was lovely to sit there meditate and listen to the village come to life. Dad and I set off with Prem after breakfast. Mum and Ann came with Kailash and all our luggage by jeep. There were quite a lot of people coming up the path as it was a Saturday. One group had a couple of young women wearing bikinis as tops which annoyed me (!) although Prem blamed the guide for not telling the women that bearing so much flesh was unacceptable in Nepal.

At a tea stop overlooking the valley we saw kites, eagles and buzzards flying quite close by, circling over the valley below. A nice ending to our trek, although it all seemed to end too soon.

Back in Pokhara we said goodbye to Kailash – he was getting a little microbus back to Kathmandu. Then, because we’d not wanted to stop walking, Prem suggested we get a boat across the lake and walk to a Peace Pagoda that overlooks Pokhara. Mum and Ann couldn’t manage the steps on the walk so they booked a ‘taximan’ they’d met during the week who spoke good English and had befriended them while we’d been trekking. The boat was an open canoe and we had to wear enormous life jackets, the walk was lovely but we went quite fast in order to meet mum and Ann in time, so couldn’t really appreciate it. The Peace Pagoda was beautifully cool beneath my hot, tired feet and had a hazy view across the lake and Pokhara.

Looking back on this trek (it is now August!) it feels like it was a little window of calm in what has been a very busy and stressful time over the last five months. The eye of a storm. On my return to the UK I was inundated with work, trying to finish off writing the research report for the Bamboo Project (the reason I was in Nepal in the first place) and taking on another consultancy project (more writing). It’s wonderful to remember the mountain views, and writing this post has allowed me to dip into the calm and beauty of those four days and refresh myself….