I met a familiar face at the bus station in Varanasi - it was Ross, the Australian guy I shared a taxi with in Calcutta to Howrah Station. I knew he was going to Nepal and we had exchanged e-mail addresses but not yet written to each other. Now we didn't need to. We both wanted to walk the Annapurna track near Pokhara so we decided early on that we should do it together, not just because it's safer and probably more fun than doing it on your own but because we both shared a passion for cricket and planned the trip so that we could watch as much of it as possible.
The bus from Varanasi to the Nepali border took about eight hours and as expected the Nepali border crossing was quick and painless, even though we had to get our visas at the border. We were put up in a dorm room at the Nepal Guesthouse about 200m from the border and early the next morning the trip continued with another nine-hour journey through to Pokhara. To imagine Pokhara think quiet, lakeside town with the Himalayan mountain range as a backdrop. It's beautiful and very peaceful. Our accommodation in Pokhara was at a place called Motherland for RS75 - a typical dinner with drinks would cost twice that.
JIMMY WOOD
You meet some very strange people when you travel and Jimmy Wood was no exception. Ross and I had gone out for dinner one evening and we found Jimmy sitting on his own in a prime location at one of the many restaurants on the main street. He offered us his table, explaining that he was about to leave anyway but we started talking about cricket and found that although Jimmy is Canadian, he's a big cricket fan and a big sports fan in general. He was 57 years old, wore a massive beard, easily six inches long and was very tall. After a while a few of Jimmy's seemingly far fetched stories started coming out. He had a massive beard because he had just spent 122 days walking from the Himalayas in Kashmir to Nepal but he claimed he had just given it a trim. He was a big sports fan because in his prime he was an NFL wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns, then a centre fielder for the New York Yankees, although he was to downplay his abilities and his overall success in both codes. Now, in his mid-fifties he's ranked in the top 100 players in Canadian tennis and hold ambitions of marrying Serena Williams. Since his retirement from professional sports in the mid-seventies he's been spending much of his time in the Himalayas researching the snow leopard and the blue sheep and living the simple life in the mountains. He gave us some good advice on what to expect when walking the Annapurna circuit and suggested a couple of side trips that might be worth the effort. He's been wandering around these parts for the past 25 years so we paid attention carefully.
Tomorrow Ross and I start off on our walk around the Annapurna Mountains and up to the base camp - a walk that should take us three weeks, weather permitting.
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