namaste!

after 8 hours on a bus, we finally made it to Pokhara Nepal!! it's only 200km away from Kathmandu but we stopped 8 times for breaks so it took us all day to get here. it was hot and matt wished "for a diaper full of ice cubes" but no one was selling any. Milan, our trek guide, met us at the bus station and took us to the hotel we've been staying at. we got the penthouse (very different from US penthouses though...) with an AMAZING view of the lake and the entire valley. Pokhara is MUCH better than Kathmandu. It's much smaller, making it a little bit cleaner. There are good restaurants but they all serve the same thing: EVERYTHING. Pizza, "Maxican" food, Italian, Chinese, Nepali, Indian, etc. Seriously though, every restaurant has the exact same menu. Just as in the states, I've had trouble getting pizza with no tomato sauce--someone please tell me what is so hard about that???

we took it pretty easy the first day... we wented a motorbike for USD$14 including a full gas tank for the day and took it out for a cruise around the lake into some villages and farms. the roads are all rock so it was pretty bumpy on the 100CC Yamaha but nonetheless it was very very pretty! i'm convinced this place is where sunsets were invented. with all the different mountains around, you can easily catch like 4 different sunsets in one night!! we posted some pictures from that and have some videos, but our camera battery is dead so the rest will have to wait. we're getting everything ready to go on our trek tomorrow. we'll be going to the Annapurna Basecamp (total should be gone about 10 days). our guide said if we're lucky we'll see a tiger!! i think he was kidding though??? ............

alright--that's kind of it. let us know what's up with you folks! until next time.... love!--cat (& matt)