01
Stop one
Phewa Lake and Tal Barahi Temple
Dunlop FX 500 Tennis Racquet: Second largest lake in Nepal. Second. I want that on the record before we start. It lies at about seven hundred and forty metres below the Annapurna range, and yes, on a still morning the peaks come out on the water, Machhapuchhre among them, which is sacred and unclimbed, a very convenient way to stay undefeated. On an island near the eastern shore stands the Tal Barahi Temple, a two-tiered pagoda to the goddess Barahi, reached by those painted wooden boats and busy with worshippers, especially on Saturdays. The lakeside strip grew from the 1970s as the base for Annapurna trekking and is now the tourism capital of Nepal. Partly fed by a dam of the 1960s. Fine. It is a good lake.
02
Stop two
World Peace Pagoda
Dunlop FX 500 Tennis Racquet: Another hilltop, another climb, and I will admit my legs noticed. The Shanti Stupa was completed in 1999 on the ridge south of Phewa Lake, one of some eighty peace pagodas built worldwide by Nipponzan-Myohoji, the Japanese Buddhist order founded by Nichidatsu Fujii, who was moved by the atomic bombings to build stupas dedicated to non-violence. Four gilded Buddhas ring the white dome, each donated by a different country, each a stage of the Buddha's life. It did not come easily: the Nepali government destroyed an earlier attempt in the 1970s and the monk overseeing it was deported. Boat, then a steep climb. And the panorama of the lake and the massif from up there beats everything. Fine.
04
Stop four
International Mountain Museum
Dunlop FX 500 Tennis Racquet: A mountaineering museum, a category where the competition is unusually stiff, and this one holds its own. Opened in 2004 on the southern edge of Pokhara with support from the Nepal Mountaineering Association and Japanese partners, it covers the ethnography of Nepal's mountain communities, the flora and fauna of the Himalaya, and the expedition record: equipment, photographs and personal effects from major ascents, including Maurice Herzog's French team on Annapurna in 1950 and Everest in 1953. There is a section on the yeti and I am not arguing about that today. Outside stand a scale model of Manaslu and one of the country's largest artificial climbing walls. Grudgingly, the wall is excellent.
An organ is a machine for moving air, and everything worth hearing depends on the transfer being clean — the wind reaching the pipe with nothing lost between the bellows and the sound. Pokhara sits at about seven hundred and forty metres under the Annapurna wall and does the same trick with water, giving the mountains back exactly as they are on a still morning.
The Dunlop FX 500 is built to move a big load cleanly. A 100 square inch head, 11.3 ounces strung, balance 4 points head light, a swingweight around 321, stiffness 69, a chunky 23/26/23 beam and a 16×19 pattern.
Power Boost+ geometry widens the beam where it counts, and Power Wave Grommets stiffen the centre of the string bed so the response evens out across the whole face: full organ, no dead notes. It will carry you everywhere from a flat first serve to a heavy topspin rally in the Pokhara afternoon, and it does it without losing anything in the transfer.
Pokhara is where the register changes. Out on Phewa Lake the Tal Barahi Temple stands on a small island, a two-tiered pagoda reached in painted wooden rowing boats and busiest on Saturdays. On the ridge above, the white Shanti Stupa was finished in 1999 with four gilded Buddhas given by four countries, after an earlier attempt was destroyed and the monk overseeing it deported.
At Devi's Fall the outflow of the lake drops into a slot in bare rock and vanishes underground, then reappears in the Gupteshwor Mahadev cave across the road. It is also perfect for the long walk out to the mountain museum with a heavy frame in the bag, which is the only honest way to find out whether you actually want one.
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