Pokhara – Chitwan 31st May 2006

I met up with Dessie at Raju’s at 11:00, but he had a bit of trouble with his electrics so Raju was fixing them. I had bumped into an Aussie guy, Dan, last week and he has a 350cc bullet with a few problems, I’d told him about Raju’s and he was there as well when I rode up.

It was 11:30 by the time we got on the road and it was going to be a long journey. Raju had put new piston rings into Dessie’s engine, so the engine had to be run in at 60kph (max) for 500km’s. Dessie led out of town and once we hit the open road I went on ahead. I met up with him at the tea stop where I had taken the photo’s on the way back from the Last Resort. I gave him the photo’s as he knows the women there and it was great to see the joy on their faces when Dessie gave them the photo’s. And we got a free Chai each!

We met up again an hour or so later at a bridge in a crossroads town called Mugling. From here we left the Pokhara – Kathmandu road and followed the path of the Narayani for about half an hour before pulling over for some noodles at a road side ‘café’. They have a small monkey outside the café, it’s tied to a bamboo cane around it’s waist. When we got there, there was a group of Nepalese sitting by the monkey with a lighter in their hands. They were trying to set fire to the monkeys fire and it was trying to get away from them, which it couldn’t really as it was tied to the bamboo cane. I shouted over to them to stop and they gave me a ‘gappy’ smile and continued to taunt the monkey. Dessie picked up his lighter went over to the guy with the lighter and started to try and set fire to his legs! The guy didn’t like this being done to him and Dessie starts shouting to him in Nepalese and the guy gets up and walks off. He was lucky he didn’t get a few slaps for his trouble.

We got to Sauraha around 17:00, had a quick beer and then headed down to the river to watch the sunset over the jungle. When we got there we met up with Rick and Mo, who had arrived the night before, and had a few beers and something to eat. I was a beautiful setting as the river was ten feet away and elephants were crossing from the jungle with the sun setting in the background. It wasn’t the best sunset as it turned out, as it hit some haze just as it was dipping behind the hills and lost a lot of its colour. Didn’t get up to much else that evening, just enjoyed chilling out by the river hearing all the noises coming from the jungle, which holds tigers, leopards, rhino, elephants, crocodiles, deer and various other animals you only normally see on television.