Travel log of Eli and Anna Bendersky

Hi all,

We are currently in Pokhara - a small (and very beautiful) mountainside town from which all the Annapurna treks start. We already have everything organized for the trek which we start tomorrow morning. It is a good place to remind you (especially the parents) that during the trek (that is, in the next 10-12 days) there will be no contact with us whatsoever, so please don’t worry.

We arrived to Nepal two days ago. It’s quite a shock ! This is a third world country, everything looks just like in these movies about the third world. Nevertheless, it has good facilities for tourists. The people here are very nice, they look different from the Thais (more Indian-like) and speak English much better (which was a pleasant surprise). Israel is quite popular here because of the many trekkers. In Pokhara every third shop has something in Hebrew written on it.

Kathmandu looks from the plane like a small village (with 700,000 residents…), and so it looks when you are in the city itself. The streets are narrow, without sidewalks, and extremely crowded. Enormous number of merchants try to sell all kinds of useless stuff to you like violins, fake bracelets, tiny chess sets, miracle tiger medicine, etc. In the evening someone might come quietly from behind you and offer you “something to smoke” (we were offered 5 times only yesterday!). Add to this a lot of noisy rikshaw and taxi drivers, frequent electricity black-outs and loud Indian music and you get the picture

We went around the city, visited the “monkey temple” and Durbar square, managed to get lost quite a few times which luckily gave us a good opportunity to see some of Kathmandu outside the Thamel (the tourist district, similar to Khoa-San in Bangkok).

Today early in the morning (7:00) we got on a bus to Pokhara on the “Tribhuvan highway” - Nepal’s primary road. Road-conditions-wise it’s somewhat worse than the road from Daliyat el Carmel to Osafiyah, but scenery-wise it’s the most beautiful road we’ve ever seen. It goes through and between high green hills, rice terraces and low clouds and just leaves you gazing with an open mouth sometimes. Also, on the road we met a very friendly Tibetian guy and spoke with him a lot, and a nice German guy with whom we’ll be trekking. At about 2:30 PM we arrived to Pokhara.

We wish you all a happy new year and an easy fast, forgive us for all the bad things we did to you this year (for instance, that we couldn’t have been there with you for the holidays).

So it’s the end of our third day here, tomorrow we’ll be on a plane to Kathmandu. So far everything is great and we are enjoying the trip and having a great time.

Bangkok is very different from what we’ve seen so far, anywhere. The city is amazingly polluted. When you go out to the street, you get a hot smelly sensation all over you. The city is a mixup of old and new. There are many modern skyscrapers here, and one look away - small ancient temples. The transportation is highly developed here - a subway, taxis, tuk-tuks, buses, river taxi, and a sky train. We tried most of these transports

By the way, tuk-tuks are small 3 wheeled motorcycles that have a place for two passengers. It’s the fastest way to travel in the city since their drivers are worse than Israeli taxi drivers - they cut through lanes, drive on the opposing lane some of the time (generally it seems that the lanes on Bangkok roads are recommendation only, people don’t really pay much attention to them), and with the tuk-tuk being small and maneuverable, it’s easy to reach your destination quickly.

We’ve been very busy trying to visit as much of Bangkok as possible. Yesterday was a particularly packed day - we visited some temples and the royal palace, cruised on the river on a boat-taxi , went to the weekend Chatuchak market (it’s so big that in 5 hours we went through a very small portion) and finally the rain sent us hiding into MBK - a shopping mall that would make Grand Canyon blush - 7 huge floors. Generally, there’s a major rain at least once a day here, and so far we ended each day very wet - although it doesn’t interfere with the touring much. The rain usually starts in the evening and lasts a couple of hours - turning the streets into rivers. Source (Shoresh) sandals are mandatory here - now we also understand why most Thais wear beach slippers

The food here is very diverse and amazingly cheap. You can eat a satisfying meal of Pad Thai for 15 baht (1.6 NIS), and even restaurants cost very little (today we paid about 16 NIS for a lunch for two). We are trying to be careful with the food and drinks, not consuming anything that looks [too] dangerous, and so far it’s paying off - we are not experiencing any major problems with our digestion.