Pokhara is one of the main tourist hot spots in Nepal.

Budget travellers and more upscale visitors gather before and after treks and adventures to soak up the sun, relax by the lake and plan their next trip.

Joined by my three best friends Justine, Maria and Emmeline, I ventured out of crazy Varanasi in India to the lush surroundings of rice paddies and the dreamy lake of Pokhara.

When an Indian travel agent told us it would take us six hours to reach Nepal, we hopped, skipped and jumped on the next train out.

We naively believed six hours would get us out of India, across the border into Nepal and to the city of Pokhara.

The journey was actually split into an eight-hour bus and taxi journey to the border, and a nine-hour taxi ride from the border to Pokhara.

Needless to say, it was a mission but we reaped the rewards as soon as we crossed the border from dusty, noisy India, to quieter more relaxed Nepali atmosphere.

The first time we whizzed around the narrow bends on the side of mountains, Nepal welcomed us with endless thick vegetation, gushing rivers and rural villages.

Our driver stopped us at a tiny tin shack on the roadside that was literally on the edge the cliff.

We sat, silently stunned by the serene scenery and sipped our chai tea and munched on potato pakoras, inhaling the fresh mountain air.

We instantly felt the shift to a slower tempo, which is captured in the essence of Nepali hospitality.

From high-end resorts to budget hostels, we were pleasantly surprised by the choice of accommodation once we arrived in Pokhara and opted for the chilled out North Lakeside offering basic bed, shared showers and the occasional electricity socket that worked at will for €1.50 per room.

With an instructor and parachute tied to my back, I took a leap of faith and ran off the side of the mountain

We spent the first day sipping green tea by the lake and eating delicious vegetarian food from a little travellers’ hangout called Tabi’s Cafe.

By the evening, we were invited to join a campfire in a wooden house on the mountain. After walking for an hour up a dry riverbed, we found a gathering of creative travellers cooking over a fire.

Stories began to be exchanged between a German carpenter, Spanish jewellery maker, Malaysian painter, English physicist-cum-artist and we four Maltese girls and an immediate sense of family was conjured.

When we woke up the next morning for sunrise, we saw the view overlooking the lake as we were tucked between two mountains.

There was one room left and we decided to squeeze into the tiny space, roll out our sleeping bags and call this serene place ‘home’ for a few weeks.

We woke up early each morning, practised yoga, read and painted, cooked breakfast using nearby farmers’ produce and made blueberry jams, blueberry yoghurt and any other blueberry concoction we could muster up using fresh fruit. We indulged in the simplicities of life that often pass us by.

Pokhara is also an adventure junkie’s paradise as professional paragliders from the world over gather here for cheap accommodation and practically year-round flyable weather conditions.

With an instructor and parachute tied to my back, I took a leap of faith and ran off the side of the mountain with at least two other paragliders running off the platform at the same time.

My heart did a somersault in my mouth, only to be yanked back by my paragliding instructor just as I was at the edge.

“No, we didn’t catch the wind, we’ll have to run again,” he said casually.

My knees turned into jelly and another instructor had to pull my harness to get my legs into gear. Second time lucky.

As we began soaring, I could fully immerse myself in the experience and we glided over the villages and looped over Phewa lake for a 30-minute, blissful bird’s eye view of rice paddies, stupas and mountains.

Our final frontier was the Panchase trek.

Maria, Emmeline and I set out on what we were told was a three-hour hike. We happily ate our packed lunch an hour-and- a-half later, proud of our stamina so far, and calculated it would take another two hours to reach the summit.

But as we walked up the long, long trail of crooked steps, passing by clusters of houses huddled together, an old man watched us stomp along breathlessly. We stopped for confirmation.

“Panchase up there?” we asked, pointing in the hope that he would give us a head wobble and tell us we were minutes away from our destination.

We sat, silently stunned by the scenery and sipped our chai tea, inhaling the fresh mountain air

“Panchase?” he replied with a look that bordered between amusement and disbelief.

“No, no, no, you go back. Go with bus. You stop wrong place. Panchase six hour!”

Unable to believe we had trekked all this way for no reason, we continued on our way, fighting strong feelings of uncertainty.

After eight long hours, we arrived at the summit, greeted by three women who owned a small log cabin inn called The Three Sisters.

They brewed us coffee as we watched the sun sink slowly behind the misty mountains.

Come sundown, all the trekkers gathered around the wood stove and the sisters took exemplary care of us, with a feast of food from fields that they tended themselves – organic vegetables and curry.

The villagers joined us with dancing and singing, playing handmade instruments and drinking devilishly strong, home-brewed rakshi, a spirit similar to tequila.

These delightful treats were accompanied by their stories of previous adventures.

One villager shared his life philosophy: “Life is for being happy, and money is only there to help them get through it but not their main focus.”