Happy New Year

Today is the first day of the Nepali year 2065; which means that last night was new year's eve.

This in turn means that there were some sore heads this morning - but the main victim was Gyan, who I think was rather led astray by bad influences.

The travel update is that some of us arrived late yesterday in Pokhara (myself + Björn, Juhani from Finland and Amit from Canada). The enlarged group of 8 + Gyan left Kagbeni a few days ago for Jomsom where we had agreed to split into two groups. Our 4 +G wanted to get a jeep to speed us through some parts where there is some road-building going on. We ended up in Tatopani (and in the hot springs there) for a night before walking on to Beni and catching a local bus for the 4.5 hour ride to Pokhara (the kind with half of the passengers sitting on the roof!).

We expect to stay in Pokhara for some time and to be reuinited with the others in the next day or two before splitting again. Pokhara is a great place in my humble opinion, with a lakeside location and a fine backdrop of Himalayan peaks. I'm contemplating where to head for next but will be happy to be here for several days. Today we said our farewells to Gyan (who has done an excellent job). Tomorrow we plan to walk up to a local Hindu temple in the morning. The weather has been a bit unusual for the time of year, with lots of rain in the late afternoon (or snow in the high mountains). The locals tell us that this is either late winter rain or early monsoon rain. I guess that climate change is reaching here as much as anywhere else! The other big news here is that the election of last Thursday seems to be resulting in a real victory for the Maoists. So far we haven't seen any trouble resulting from this - only some small celabratory victory parades. The general feeling seems to be that this was a fair enough election and that it is time for some significant changes. Before I go I'll try to post a couple of pictures. One is the view from Kagbeni looking down the Kali Gandaki valley. The other a small avalanche on the Gungapurna glacier from Manang.

And some people we met on the way up. A mother who cooked for us in a lodge in Tal, and some nice kids in the same area.