Musings from Pokhara, Nepal

I have decided... I am officially in love with Nepal.
Most of this feeling is due, I believe, to the
16 hour a day power outages and the way the place is in the evenings, after dark, with no electricity. It's like camping. Its a little bit magical to be here. and it really, really makes you think about the power you use, or don't use, as the case may be. I know the Nepalis are a little frusterated and embarrassed by the situation, but I am absolutely delighted. It is so peaceful.
After dark is the best time when only some places have generators or alternative power sources and the rest are reduced to candlelight and old fashioned oil lamps, like the ones we had when I was a kid at the ranch. The street is alive and swinging. Its like a quiet mardi gras, the way people are just strolling around. Music blares out into the street from the generatored places.... rock, jazz, typical Nepali music, and Asian electronic fusion (my personal favourite) all pour into the streets as you walk along and incense and savoury smells from kitchens waft to your nose. It is so mystical and magical. Cooking is not a problem because they cook on gas. Only espresso machines and other electronic devices are down. The general feeling is warm and amicable and a little bit exotic and mysterious.
Last night when i returned in the dark side street to my guest house (i call it my bed and breakfast because it is so nice it reminds me of a canadian bed and breakfast, but it is cheap, $5 cad off season rate... I HAVE HOT WATER!!!!, no lights, mind you, but who needs lights when you have hot water, is my thinking. the hot water is solar).... so when i turned down my street from the main street last night, it was Very very dark. You can just make out enough of the sides of the street to keep yourself on it, lit only by the stars and broken shadows. You sort of feel your way along until things start to look familiar and then you turn in to your guest house. I notice the Nepalis use the same method of navigating in the dark. Its only the foreigners that are carrying small torches. I never seem to when i travel. i don't know. i just never found it a necessary accessory to pack.
I was on the ball enough to buy candles yesterday, but alas, forgot to buy matches, which was fine because i bumped into my hotelier who was falling over himself apologizing profusely for the absolute blackness that permeated the property from the front gate to my front door. "No problem, no problem!" I reassured him. I shared with him a secret..... that i really love power outages. I told him I had candles and bummed matches off him before retiring alone to my big, romantic, candlelit room. I had a great sleep. The Nepalis really know how to make up a good bed. wow. The room values are good in this season.
They also know how to make a good restaurant. The food, the service AND the ambiance are first class for what you pay. Everything is about twice as expensive as India, but you do get what you pay for. Its kind of a nice break from roughing it in India. It all feels very posh and upscale by comparison.
You find the most unusual and unexpected things on the menu in foreign countries. .... Like the crayfish sandwiches i found at the Hong Kong airport Starbucks ( i didn't eat it of course), and here... they have Egg Nog!!! homemade egg nog, of all things. and it is probably the best egg nog you ever tasted, though i haven't tried it yet. Perhaps i will and report back to you.
what else?.... i dunno, just sometimes there are some things that you would never expect. something obscure and strange, that they somehow get a hold of and put on the menu. Perhaps some foreigner was telling them about it. They are very ingenious and enterprising. If they think you will buy it, they will figure out how to make it, and make it good so you will buy it.
It has taken me 4 days to finally figure out the money here and the exchange rate of canadian dollars to Nepali rupees without converting it in my mind first through Indian rupees then to canadian dollars....(imagine the mental gymnastics required there!)
The internet is really expensive here in Pokhara. More than double what it is in India. Probably because they have to fire up the gas generator every time you go online.
But besides contributing to air pollution every time I need to use the internet, I am really enjoying the power outage situation. It is the single most defining aspect of the whole Nepali experience at the moment.
A nice and unexpected thing i've found here is FIREPLACES in restaurants. Its just like a ski chalet. So nice to warm your bones by wood heat during these cold Himalayan nights.
Pokhara is a lakeside resort type place and its off season, so it's pretty quiet. Alot of shops and restaurants and not alot of people to fill them. It seems popular with young Nepalis. I don't know if they are tourists too or if they live here.
I am here one week, and i sort of look at it as a vacation from my vacation. haha. although my travelling, living, and being in India is not a vacation in my eyes, its an education, and i work pretty hard at times there.
To give you an idea of the kind of place Pokhara is.... this morning as i ate my breakfast i looked out at some pretty nice mountain bikes lined up against a wall across the street. On the wall was painted "bikes for rent" and the bikes were not locked. There was no cable running through them to keep them from being taken. It is just not conceivable that anyone would do it, take them, i mean. and you easily could because there is no one watching them and even the shops nearby wouldn't necessarily notice if you did. If you DID want to rent one, the process would be going to each of the shops around there to find out who was doing the renting.
One store I looked in this morning that sold Buddhist art and painting had no shopkeeper. I browsed for 5 minutes and but the shop remained empty. Typical of off-season here.

Despite business being so slow, Nepali's are not pushy about selling their wares. You can't imagine that they sell more than 3 or 4 dollars a day in the off season now, but this doesn't seem to bother them too much. The merchandise is all beautiful from Yak wool sweaters, pashminas and bags to cushion covers and jewellry. It is all gorgeous and would fetch a pretty penny in the west.
I can't get over that they have twice as many non-power hours (16) as they do power hours (8). This just blows my mind. But you know if the world all went to hell in a hand basket and the economic system crumbled and we were out of fuel and out of power and no groceries on the shelves of the supermarket, you know that the people in Nepal and India would fair ok. They already know how to survive with very little, to live very basically and simply. Its us in the western and developed countries who would be mostly at a loss as to how to proceed.
Here, life is still somewhat natural and not totally divorced from instinct and common sense.
Not that I'm criticizing the west, I'm just observing some of the good things about countries like Nepal and India.
So, my hour is up. I'm going to go for a walk along the lakeside and see what i can see. Leisurely day. I already took my laundry in to the service (taking a break from handwashing it myself in a bucket) and i just have to sell a book and then my "chores" are done for the day.
I will probably move to the Buddhist centre in a day or two for the rest of my stay in Pokhara, when i am done relaxing in my bed and breakfast.
lots of love to all.