Tuesday, January 25

I was browsing through Youtube looking for something that might amuse me when up popped a little video about a cable car in Nepal that takes pilgrims to the Manakamana Temple. And, by coincidence, we have been there, in November, 2010!

 

We were travelling in a mini-bus between Jomson in the mountains to Pokhara and were having an overnight stop at Riverside Springs.  The road was appalling, I remember, and with the dust and the heat we were ready for a swim.  We assumed that a place called Riverside Springs would have somewhere to swim, perhaps in the river or the springs.  As it happened, the ‘Springs’ only existed in a marketing executive’s imagination, the river was miles away, and the resort’s pool was being cleaned and wouldn’t be available for a couple of hours.

 

To fill in time, we decided to try out the cable car  It was massive, built by an Austrian company and constantly busy carrying pilgrims to and from the temple.  Prices for locals were very reasonable but ‘rich’ tourist were charged $15US.  There was a special price for goats who were on their way to be sacrificed, so only travelled one way. We didn’t happen to see any goats on our visit but, on the video, a group of 5 or 6 were being reluctantly shoved into a cage for their trip of a lifetime.

 

I found it hard to recognise any landmarks.  The view from all cable cars is the same and there has obviously been some development in the 11 years.  The faces in the crowd were typically Nepalese, though, and reminded me that we had met an elderly man travelling with his daughter who told us he was a Ghurkha and had served in the Indian army.