Not a long rest for the wicked

Mattias' bus was at 7 so he woke up early and since I was still sort of in the trekking mode I also woke up early and didn't go back to bed. What else to do than walk around town and maybe get a coffee at this time of the day.

It was still quite in town but I found a coffee shop with internet and nice coffee. From here I could sort out a couple of things: 1st my AIB bank card was blocked before we left for the trek as I tried to take out more than 10000 NRP (80€) at once. So I called the bank and they reset the card, no problem. Now I was able to even pay for my Paragliding experience. 2nd I booked the hostel in Kathmandu for two nights.

With all this sorted and a nice Mediterranean Omelette for breakfast I went back to the Guest house, found a nice place on the roof top and read my book until it was time to go to the Paragliding. I decided to pay 1700 NRP extra for some photos (I used Sunrise Paragliding) and off we went in a Jeep to the top of Sarangkot Mountain (1600m - about 1000m above the lake).

Binod my Pilot for the tandem flight gave me very quick instructions of what to do and soon I was strapped in a harness and we were waiting at the edge of pretty steep drop for the right wind to come around. We were there probably (at least it felt like that) 10 minutes until we got a good breeze and jumped off.

We were flying!!!! My feet dangling a couple of hundred meters above the ground and we flew circles to gain altitude. Soon we were way above the meadow from where we started and a little bit later even above the peak of Sarangkot mountain.

The only disadvantage of getting so high was that we were circling continuously clockwise up and up. Soon I got a bit dizzy, but of course didn't want to show it.

The view was still magnificent but I wouldn't have minded a few minutes of straight flight. Binod kept shooting pictures with the GoPro on a Stick and soon we were in straight flight towards Pokhara and banked right to move towards the lake.

Over the lake it was safe enough to do a few tricks, so we went down and turned and recreated our own personal roller coaster. This again was great fun as we turned left and right and finally approached the landing area and touched down.

It was a great experience (another one this week) and well worth the money.

Back on solid ground we packed up our glider and headed back to the Sunrise Paragliding office at Lakeside.

After some lunch at a small Tandori place I went to meet up with Deepak and he took me on his bike to the Orphanage which wasn't very far.

Deepak introduced me to his Wife and Daughter Eva and showed me around the House. It is a pretty big house but may be small considering that sometimes more than 30 kids and youngsters are living here. The boys were on the ground floor in 6 bed dorms and the younger girls on the 1st floor in rooms with two beds.

We went to the large kitchen and he also showed me the Computer area with 8 computers and a classroom for classes held in the House.

They also have a little "art room" with sewing machines and paintings the kids painted themselves.
There were also two German girls that were volunteering, so there really was not much for me to do, so we had a cup of tea and I wrote in the guest book.

It was a short but very nice visit and gave me a bit of a perspective of how some kids are growing up.
This is certainly a great initiative that is well worth supporting especially considering that they are not receiving any financial support from the Government.

Deepak was very kind and dropped me back home to the Guest house. From there I met up with Isabel and we had a Pizza at Godfathers Pizza. Unfortunately I had a very late lunch and wasn't able to finish the Pizza. I was also struggling in finding space for the beer we had afterwards at the "Blues" bar where a pretty cool local Rock band played. So after the beer I switched to Johnny Walker Black label for 3€ a glass and enjoyed the show.

When the place closed we were still not ready to go to sleep so we tried to get a beer at the Freedom Cafe, but that was closed as well. Luckily we bumped into a bunch of backpacker that had the same issue and ended up on the rooftop of their hostel and enjoyed a few beers until early in the morning.

I had to get back to the guest house because I wanted to get at least a few hours of sleep before having to take the bus to Kathmandu the next morning.