Pokhara, Nepal

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“Promise” is my attempt to capture an entire 30-day trip to Pokhara, Nepal in one music video. While such an objective is unachievable, I believe that these 6 minutes do present a good portrait of my time there. So you should cut me some slack…it’s just toooo difficult, particularly when the experience was so magnificent on so many levels.

It should be pretty obvious that the Himalayas themselves did a passable job of inspiring awe. To sit on the shores of Phewa Lake, at 800 meters, and observe a ridge of 7000 and 8000 meter peaks scarcely a dozen miles away? Not soon forgotten. Soaring beneath a paragliding wing at 3500 meters and looking at those same peaks, now only 8 miles away? Pretty flippin’ special.

And I met people from all over the world. Naturally there were the Nepalese–generous, good-natured, helpful, and gracious hosts. As were the many local transplants from neighboring lands–the Indians and Tibetans, whom I met running shops or adventure companies or restaurants in Lakeside. But there were also people from Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, France (LOTS of frenchmen in Pokhara), Spain, Austria, Italy, China, Japan, Russia (throw a rock in Pokhara, it’ll hit a russian. Guaranteed), England, Ireland, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, the United States, Brazil, and Korea. And those are just the pilots, and just those I can remember sitting here at my computer 6 months after the fact.

As a result of this highly diverse international presence, Pokhara has evolved a crazy-beautiful Nepali sub-culture all its own. Lakeside is a mini-Thamel, without being quite as in-your-face as the Kathmandu version. You can find fantastic, well-prepared, ridiculously inexpensive, and homey dishes from virtually any place you’d like (hätten Sie gern ein bißchen Currywurst? Kein Problem!)