Parahawked.

Well, I've been paragliding. More specifaclly parahawking! It was great. Not as scary as I thought it would have been although I wasn't feeling the best for the last the last 10 minutes of the flight and for a while after I was on the ground. So this is the short how too of parahawking. Your flight person is behind you during the flight, mine was a girl named Elle who was from Canada/Finland(so attractive) anyway she sets up the chute. I think that's what they call it. We are on the top of a hill that's like 2000ft, Elle pulls on the some controls as I take a few steps forward. She has instructed me to run a bit, so I do. I started running and it's really hard because of the resistance from the wind on the chute. About 15 feet in front of us the hill goes down a bit, so we aren't fully in the air yet so I keep running on a different part of the hill because there's a gradual decline. I take a couple steps and the next thing I know is that I'm floating. It was a wicked sensation and not actually that scary. In the paraglide contraception there's a board that you sit on so it's like sitting on a chair, it's quite comfortable considering your 2000ft up. I should have mentioned Bob, he's the Egyptian Vulture that would be landing on me in the pictures above. He's a nice vulture and he likes buffalo meat almost as much as I like hamburgers. Bob went back and forth between me and the other guy who was also parahawking. They had whistles that they could blow and Bob would come to the whistle. The other tandem pilot was Scott Mason-he invented parahawking, it was really cool to meet and talk to him. So the flight was about 30 minutes and not very cheap but it was worth it because I probably won't do that again. I'm not sure it was the best thing ever mainly because I was expecting a bit more risk and danger but it was still great and if your ever in Nepal you should do it. I was suppose to get a video but it didn't work so if you want to see a video just search on youtube for parahawking. It should come up. Now for a story that's a lot different.

So I decided I should try and explore the city of Pokhara a bit and I decided to rent a bike to go around the lake. I paid 150 rupees to rent the bike for the day, so I started to make my way out of town. After about 30 minutes of biking I noticed that my pedal/crank is starting to fall off. About 2 minutes later it falls completely off. I don't have any tools to fix this so I walk a little bit and come to a village where some kid fixes my bike in about 2 minutes. I tip him 50 rupees and continue on my way. I should mention that it's about 35 degrees outside and the sun is intense. I keep biking and now I'm getting away from the last of the little villages and I've also ran out of water. After biking about another hour or so my peddle falls off again, this time I'm really screwed. I continue on my way, pushing my bike because I can't ride it now and there is some houses up ahead. Well there was no one around that could fix a bike, actually no one around at all. I think they were all fishing in the lake. Fewa Lake is the name of the lake, it's pretty big but not huge. I continue to follow the road because I think I'm about half way around at this point, except now the road takes a sudden incline up and to the opposite direction. Crap! After walking up hill a bit and dying of thirst I decided to turn around and head back. Well not all the way back because I intended to hitch a ride, although the only people around were fishing so I paid them to take me across the lake. At this point I was utterly desperate and I probably couldn't have made it back by walking without water. So 2 local kids and my bike and I set off across the lake, we are about 20 minutes into the trip and I'm still crazy thirsty so I take out my empty bottle and drink the water directly from the lake. A day before this I was telling someone that I wouldn't swim in the water because it didn't look good. But when your as thirsty as I am it didn't really matter. I probably drank about 500ml of water, I felt much better and it didn't taste that bad. So after about 2 hours(at least) we were back on the other side of the lake and now I just had to get to shore. So I do that except I walk through mud for about 5 minutes, this mud is up to my knees and there's probably a lot of animal shit mixed in with it. If I didn't have a disease before that I might now. I make the walk threw town in bare feet and return the bike, I give the bike rental guy the cliff notes of the trip and he doesn't really seem to care so I just walk away. I'm still covered in mud and I'm sunburned now as well because my sunscreen came off because of the sweat. I take a shower and then explain my story to my room rate who can't believe I'm still feeling good despite drinking the water from the lake. It's been 2 days now and I didn't feel any effects of it. So it was a typical day in Nepal. This will be the last blog for at least 4 days since I'm going trekking in the Annapurna Mountain Range with Adam-a guy from the US that I met at the dorm I'm staying in. I'm really excited to see some beautiful views of the mountains and I should have some great pictures when I get back.

ps. Fish, I don't eat fish anyway so I haven't experienced any street fish but alot of the restaurants here sell them so they must be okay, although we have different standards of okay compared to here.

Thanks for reading.
Andrew