I’m at the home stay place now. It’s around 8:30 pm at night. I ate dinner not long ago. It was the most delicious dal baht I’ve had in Nepal. I’m not actually a huge fan of dal baht, but this was really good.

We took a couple of buses and then a jeep to the spot we began trekking from this morning. Riding on the roof of a jeep on bumpy mountain roads sounds fun in theory. In practice: not so much. I survived, but hope not to do that again on the way back.

We didn’t really trek for very long today. It didn’t take us more than 2 hours with a couple longer stops to get to the home stay. Once we got here it started raining. We drank fresh tea that’s grown here on the mountain. I don’t normally drink green tea, but could turn this down. It was quite good.

During the rain, I meditated for 40 minutes. It was really wonderful. I’ve found it hard to sit for longer than 10 minutes for the past couple of weeks so to sit for that long was wonderful. The world seemed to drop away. I was still very aware that I was meditating, but my awareness that I was in a little room on a mountain decreased substantially as I focused on my breath. After meditating, I gave myself a nice, long Reiki treatment and then slept for a little while. All in all it was a great way to spend the afternoon while it was raining.

We are getting up in the morning and trekking to another small town. Tomorrow we’ll stay in a hotel or guesthouse. It should be nice. I like the quiet, removed atmosphere in this village. It feels like I’m a world away from a city. This village is like from another time. There are paths that go through the town, but no shops of any kind I saw while we were making our way to the home stay.

I like it here and I feel much better than I have these last few days. To be honest, the two weeks I’ve spent in Pokhara have been quite difficult. I’m basically living my dream right now – I’m not working, I can sleep in everyday, I have absolutely no responsibility, the food is delicious and the views are stunning – yet, for some reason, I’ve really struggled to be happy.

I know I need to start thinking more about what I’m going to do in the coming weeks. I am planning to travel to India, but whether that ends up being a short trip is yet to be decided. I heard back from Susie, a girl I met in Kathmandu who’s now in India. Her report on the couple of days she spent in Varanasi was quite interesting. She said she met a holy woman/witch who taught her a lot. My friend in Istanbul also suggested Varanasi as a must visit place, so at this point I’m thinking maybe I’ll fly to Delhi, travel to see the Taj Mahal and then go to Varanasi. That wouldn’t really take too long, especially if I cut my time in Delhi short. I wouldn’t need more than a day to see the Taj Mahal and a couple days in Varanasi would probably be enough. I was looking at weekend workshops at Hz and there is one in October I’d love to make it to, but there’s another one in November. I don’t think I’ll try for either one, but rather see how it all falls into place. Now that I’m feeling better it could also be a great experience to stay in an ashram for 2-3 weeks and practice yoga. I really want to investigate yoga and the positive influence it could have one life.

Gratitude List:
A great experience doing the home stay
A full 40 minutes meditating
Some much needed time to relax, reflect and think