10/11/2019 – Rediscovering a love for chow mein

To my amazement, the roads were just as good as India, the terrain was really flat aswell. The only difference was that they were slightly narrower which meant that when busses overtook each other right in front of me I would have to change cycling shorts…

The people of Nepal are fantastic and really welcoming. I got a lot more smiles and waves from people and a lot less stares.

The first few days were spent going through a couple of national parks. There were lots of signs for Tigers but sadly/fortunately none of them paid me a visit. I did however see lots of monkeys, deer and even a peacock.

One thing that I’ve noticed on the menus is that alongside lots of traditional Indian dishes, there are now also Chinese dishes such as vegetable chow mein. I have had veg chow mein every day in Nepal as part of dinner and it is unbelievable. Just as traditional Indian curry is far superior to anything we have in the Uk, traditional chow mein is just incredible. The best I’ve had so far was at a little street food style restaurant in a tiny village one lunchtime. It cost me around 20p and blew any food that I’ve had out here so far out of the water. Definitely going to have to do my own chow mein when I get back with some recipes from people here.

After a couple of days of this, it was time to head into the mountains for Pokhara. I stayed in the closest city I could but that still left a 160km day with over 2500m of climbing to get there. It looked like it was going to be the toughest day of the whole trip so far.

It didn’t help that there were a couple of places where the road disappeared or was still ‘in construction’. Even when the roads was finished, it was so bumpy that on the downhill sections it felt like I was operating a jack hammer.

Over 9 hours and 5000 calories of cycling later I reached Pokhara in the dark. I didn’t realise quite how big of a city it was and it seemed that the hostel was as far away as possible, just my luck. It did, however, have views of the lake and mountains that I would have to wait until morning to be able to enjoy.

I’m going to spend a couple of days here to let the legs rest a little bit and see what this place has to offer. The next stop will be Kathmandu where I’ll do the same.