Over the past two weeks I’ve explored a part of Nepal I’d only seen in guidebooks… The tourist districts: Thamel in Kathmandu and Lakeside in Pokhara. If you ever travel to Nepal and want an authentic experience, avoid these areas like the plague. Because that’s exactly what you will find here. A plague of tourists moving between shops, a plague of vendors selling overpriced souvenirs, and a plague of restaurants offering sub-par pizza.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy my time in Lakeside or Thamel. I spent nearly a week on the outskirts of Lakeside when I returned from Balamchaur. It was a 180 flip from the quiet rural village life. Lakeside was crammed with European restaurants, bars, bakeries, spas, and all sorts of other temptations. Men with dark complexions wearing flip-flops sold fresh squeezed fruit juice from the back of their bikes. Women with baskets on their backs walked up & down the sidewalks wearily calling, “oranges…fresh oranges…oranges”. Live bands played inside dimly lit bars, and 90’s throwbacks floated through the cool night air. But take a step outside the main road and you’ll find that Pokhara is quite beautiful.

My first full day in Pokhara I was invited to tour the city on the back of a motor bike. I was eating breakfast when a fellow traveler asked me if I wanted join in some sightseeing. His name was Tim and he was from Germany. Other than that, I knew nothing about him. I paused ready to make up some excuse about why I couldn’t go. Then I realized that I actually wanted to join this complete stranger exploring this completely strange city. So after breakfast I grabbed a jacket and hopped on back of his rental bike.

Along with another couple, we rode up to the World Peace Pagoda for an incredible view of the Himalayas on an unusually clear day. There was a scenic cafe at the top where we stopped for tea and got to know each other. It wasn’t until then that I even knew the other couple’s names, Bailey & Bailey (easy to remember)! We swung back through town for a cheap veggie burger then rode on to explore a couple caves just outside the city. It crossed my mind a few times how bizarre the outing was. We had met this morning, but now were acting like old college friends. But that’s the nature of travel; when you meet people who share your language and a similar background, you connect instantly. They’re a small piece of home away from home.

This situation would repeat itself in the following days. I went out for pizza at a restaurant overlooking Lake Phewa with a woman from Scottland. She had been in the outdoor crowd in college and we exchanged adventure stories. The next day I went out again with a guy that had just recently arrived in Nepal and shared the advice I’d gleaned from my past five months here. On a walk along the shore of the lake I ran into an older spiritual man who educated me on the energies of the universe and finding purpose in the current life. The name he’d been assigned was Chris, but he had chosen the name Satya, meaning Truth. Needless to say, it was a memorable conversation.

Like Lakeside, Thamel brought me back to Western comforts of brightly lit cafes. Here I could open my laptop and have the world at my fingertips. I spent much of my time drinking peppermint tea and indulging on baked goods (ovens are non-existent in rural Nepal). When I escaped the clutches of Western luxury and ventured out into real Kathmandu I remembered that I was in Nepal.

I caught a micro-bus South, across the Bagmati River to Patan. It’s only a 15 minute ride, but it’s a world away from the Western facade of Thamel or the crowded streets of Kanti Path, the road that bisects central Kathmandu. Patan is not only a completely separate place, but seems to exist in a different time. The streets are worn stone, inscribed with Sanskrit mantras now reduced to faint ridges. Around every corner of the narrow streets is a temple or some other piece of history that dozens of locals walk by everyday without a second glance.

On this specific trip to Patan I went to visit Rupesh, my former yoga instructor who I spent a month practicing with while I was in the Dragons semester program. He lives on the third floor in a small studio apartment near the historic Durbar Square. On my way up to his apartment we bought some jalebi, a popular Nepali sweet, from his neighbors on the first floor. Upstairs I met his wife and 1-year-old daughter. We shared milk tea and got to know Rupesh as not just a yoga instructor, but also a caring husband and a loving father.

During my week in Kathmandu, I reconnected with many people I had met my first few months in Nepal. I had dal bhat with my Kathmandu host family. We played a couple rounds of cards and I brought ingredients to make peanut butter bars (a weekend tradition I started during the month I lived with them). I caught up with one of my instructors over tea and met my language teacher at the Kathmandu mall. By coincidence, I ran into another one of the staff at Dragons walking by on the street and we chatted for a bit. With each encounter, I said goodbye feeling energized and happy. I officially have friends in Nepal.