Annapurna done! Happy early bday to me! 12/16
We woke up at 5 in an attempt to find a flight out of here. There's no one up. We walk w our headlamps looking for the airport. We find the ticket office after wandering for 30 min. It's almost 6 and nothin is open and we are sitting in the freezing cold w all our shit. The chances of this happening aren't good. After 15 min or so, we hear movement inside. A dude opens the door. Flights for Pokhara? Yes. Yes!! Holy shit we are going to get out of here!!
We pay the $230 and walk to the airport. Flying out of a secondary airport in a 3rd world country is interesting. The waiting room was outside. I'm tired of being cold. There is one flight in and one out each day. They are first thing in the morning before the wind picks up. The flight in was late but who cares, we aren't on a 20 hour bus ride of hell. They "check" our bags since there are no X-rays. There's no checking, they open one thing in our bags and ask if we have any lighters. Nope? We are all good.
We airplane lands and we rush to board, all wanting a good seat. This plane is 3 seats wide and maybe 8 back. We both get a window seat on the left side to see the mountains. I look at Andy w love in case this is the last time I see him. He smiles, I know he's nervous too as he just mentioned "these are the planes that crash all the time". Yeah thanks I know. What could go wrong flying past the Annapurna mountains in a small plane in a 3rd world country?!
The flight was calm and amazingly beautiful! We saw the Annapurna range on our left as we flew above the fog (apparently we've been hiking above the fog too). Not only did we make it to Pokhara in 20 min, the scenery of the flight was worth the cost. So happy to be here!
We aimed for the Lake District. It was close to the airport so we walked and looked for a hotel. On the way we grabbed some oranges, samosas, and honey deep fried. How do you deep fry honey and make it taste as amazing as it sounds?!
We stopped at the fabulous Glacier Lake Hotel w an amazing lake view. The manager showed us the penthouse first (they are 20% of capacity and were expecting 50%). The room is on the 8th floor, by itself, jacuzzi, and it's own terrace over looking the lake?! Hell yeah! It's my bday!! When we checked in they gave us a watermelon drink then a real latte. A real latte! Did I mention we have the whole top floor?!
We took our first real shower in 2 weeks and left a huge dirt ring in the tub. Eww. We are mending our wounds, blisters, losing a toenail... We slowly made out way down to breakfast at 10:30, already feeling like we've had a full day. Andy had a mushroom omelette and a rösti, I had french toast to continue my honey kick. We also had a banana and one pineapple lassi. Freaking delish. I spent the next couple hours reading in the swing on our terrace enjoying the warm sun. Im thinking we need to spend another day here because it doesn't look like we are going to get out much today.
We finally ventured out into civilization and made a couple purchases. I'm not a great negotiator but I think I've found the best method. I do a crappy job negotiating, Andy says sorry, we only have this much and shows the wallet. We end up w little debate and get a good deal.
We walked around waiting for happy hour and we ran into a bunch of people we were on the circuit with. They were over it just like we were but they took the bus down. Glad we missed that. Paul said it was worse than the Death Road in Bolivia. They tried not to be scared unless the locals made an "oooh" sound. We hit up a bar by the lake and watched the sunset and shared hiking stories. Good times.