Paddling in the lake and reading a book: a ideal place to relax after the Annapurna trek. The views of the mountains from the lake and the surrounding hills are fantastic. Less fantastic are the urbanisation, the commercial tourist mile and the soldiers who march past now and then. I have almost got used to the checkpoint between Pokhara and my remote hotel: the boys in blue camouflage, rifles at the ready behind sandbags and barbed wire, carefully eyeing the black star on my red shirt.
