From Bandipur to Pokhara by road

Time to leave picturesque Bandipur for somewhere altogether busier, Pokhara. We were picked up at the parking area on the edge of the old town by Nar, who had brought us here two days ago. He drove the winding road back down the hill to pick up the main road in the valley below. The distance between the two towns is relatively short. But on Nepali roads, and worse, Nepali roads undergoing construction, the going was slow.

We stopped for coffee at one point, got caught up in several jams around the road works where as a general rule chaos reigned, and reached our Pokhara hotel, the Temple Tree, around midday. We were pleased to be able to get into our room straight away. It was quite a contrast to Tiger Tops' tent and the Old Inn's low ceilinged dark wood room. Bright, modern and with a small balcony offering a view beyond the lovely swimming pool to Machapuchare, also known as the Fishtail Mountain.

Our room

We unpacked a bit then had lunch in the bar by the pool. At 2.00 we were picked up by Nar again, along with our guide here Dan, for an afternoon of sightseeing. Our first stop was at the Seti River Gorge, a steep and narrow ravine with the river far below. It was hard to see among all the greenery and even harder to photograph - we didn’t linger!

Bindabasini Temple

Much more interesting was our next stop, Bindabasini Temple. Guided by Dan we took off our shoes to look around. While busy, this was much less of an assault on the senses than Manakamana had been a few days previously. The temple is dedicated to an incarnation of the goddess Kali and Dan explained that there had been one on the site for over 300 years, ever since a king of this region was instructed by a statue of the goddess to house her here.

As well as the main temple there are smaller ones to Shiva, Hanuman and Ganesh. There were also great views of Machapuchare, the Fishtail Mountain, from here.

At one point a group of mainly women, all beautifully and colourfully dressed, asked us to pose with them for photos. It reminded me of our visit to Rajasthan where this sort of request had been a regular occurrence, and Dan confirmed that yes, these visitors to the temple were from India.

Gupteshwor Mahadev Cave

Although not on our itinerary, Dan also took us to Gupteshwor Mahadev cave, only discovered in 1992. Chris went down into the cave with him, to see the waterfall and linga it contains, but I was happy to wander around taking a few photos in the vicinity, including of a large statue of Vishnu sleeping on a snake, Shesha.

I also had a wry smile at the advert for Nepal tourism on one of the walls. Sadly their ambitions for 2020 won't have been fulfilled.

We stopped briefly at a carpet shop in a Tibetan refugee community but as we weren’t interested in buying we kept that visit short. On the way back to the hotel Dan showed us somewhere we could change money, something we hadn’t needed to do since our first afternoon in Thamel!

Although I love smaller hotels with character, like Bandipur’s Old Inn, it made a pleasant change to be in a slightly more luxurious one for a while. Our stay at Temple Tree Resort felt more like a holiday than travelling, and we all need a holiday now and then! So we decided to eat the hotel that evening. Tables were laid outside, with lanterns, and the surrounding trees lit with fairy lights - very pretty! We shared veg momos to start with, then I had an excellent Thai chicken curry. We even drank wine as a change from Gorkha beer.