Pokhara...

Well hello!! So, Matt and I are in Pokhara now (and he's well and eating solid foods) and it seems like a very cool town. We arrived here by bus after a 7 hour ride from Kathmandu.

Like our other long ride (from the Tibet border to Kathmandu) the scenery was unbelievable. It's really hard to get a decent picture out of a bus window when you're bumping along a dirt road and inanimate objects seem to be ganging up just to ruin your shot (power lines, trees, hillsides, parked vehicles, etc.). But I tried my best, and this is what I came up with:

I was trying to get one shot that showed both the tropical foliage and the Himalayas, but I was thwarted. Alas. (Please note that the second pic DOES have Himalayas in the background, not just clouds)

Anyway, my other good shot from that journey is the following:

So, we're here in Pokhara, and after breakfast and a failed attempt to organize a kayak trip, Matt and I rented scooters and had a blast driving them around the bumpy streets and disorganized traffic of Nepal. First we checked out the old part of Pokhara, which was quite nice and lost in time, before heading to the International Mountain Museum.

The museum was adorable, think: very-well-researched old Japanese straw rain hat placed atop a piece of notebook paper with a face drawn on in marker. We had a nice time reading stories of the world's highest peaks and checking out gear from first summits. It's incredible to think that the people who summited these massive mountains (K2, Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, etc.) in the 50's did so without the aid of any super-lightweight, aluminum shaft, thermal insulating, micro-fiber (insert descriptive phrase here) hi-tech gear that we have today.

So, we were in the museum for about a half hour before it started to drizzle. It almost never rains in Nepal in November but the drizzle turned into a pour that lasted at over an hour. We had thoroughly explored the museum, re-read the Lonely Planet section on Pokhara, spent time talking to local students, and sat in boredom for a half hour before the rain turned back into a drizzle.

We procured some old newspapers for use as umbrellas and went out to our scooters. The scooters were soaked and so were we by the time we got back to Lakeside (the area of Pokhara where we're staying) in the rain. I would, however, like to say that Matt and I are now experts on the fine art of scooting, and that for $5 each for a full day, we might start to do it all the time.

On an unrelated topic:

I was thinking, the other day, about what it is that makes mountains so ______ (gorgeous, inspiring, powerful, appealing, sexy, etc.), and I don't know the answer. The same goes for bodies of water like wild rivers or the ocean, even tiny, babbling brooks.

It's really hard to qualify what makes them so magnetic. It could be the possibility of exploring them, or the history of their creation, their size, or any number of things. I don't know. I might need to consult a philosopher for this one. Anybody have any insight to offer?

Mmmwhahaha, now that I've got your minds spinning, I'm going to go to bed and leave you all to ponder....