First published Sept 12, 2005 at www.travelblog.org/bloggers/gypsygal

Beni, Nepal — Kulu and Maita – both are Magars whose families live in Nangi Village, took me to the local bus station in Pokhara.

The Magars are one of the major ethnic groups in Nepal. They’re of Tibeto-Burmese origin and live in the middle hills. The hardy and energetic Magar men constitute a big contingent in the renown Gurkha army.

It took us five hours to reach the town of Beni (actually, it should just be a four-hour bus ride, but mini breaks (toliet breaks, waiting-for-more-passengers breaks, stoping-in-military-checkpoints-because of maoist rebellion-problem-breaks) stretched the four hour journey into a five hour trip.

The rickety bus is cramped, uncomfortable and I was sweating all the time owing to the warm weather. (it’s not an aircon bus). But it’s ok, the view from my window was great. Kulu pointed at the snowcapped peaks of Annapurna, and it was awesome!

Beni’s a small rustic town full of houses of made of claybricks and tin roof. Kids, stray dogs, cows roamed freely in the streets. Beni is a popular stop over point for trekkers -which is why you can see several guesthouses, phone centers and shops selling trekking gear in Beni.

Fruit stalls like this abound all over Nepal. This stall's located in the bus station of Pokhara

We went to Beni’s main Hindu temple (Shiva temple) where my digicam proved to be an ice breaker. There were some ladies there doing a puja, one lady’s dancing, the others are chanting, and there were two guys playing a tabla. And me, as usual, a wide-eyed tourist, can’t help but get take pics and videotape some of the event (my olympus digicam can take both video and still images). After a while i showed the video to the Nepali ladies. I didn’t undertstand what they were saying but they were laughing, clearly amazed by this small contraption that took images of them singing and dancing, each of them eagerly getting hold of my camera, just to replay the video over and over again.

We stayed in a guesthouse for a night, resting for tomorrow’s major trek.

I took this while waiting for a bus that will take us at Beni. This is at the bus station in Pokhara

In Beni, as in any villages in Nepal, small stores like this one, serve as beauty boutiques for Nepali women who like to adorn themselves. They're called cosmetic shops, and they're usually stocked with all mirrors and shampoo, lipstick, sunscreen lotion, women's underwear, brightly-colored bangles.

Nepali villagers in Beni singing and dancing, offering puja in Shiva's Temple in Beni