Phewa Lake is a lake at the edge of Pokhara, in central Nepal, that on a still morning gives back the whole Annapurna range on its surface, with the fishtail peak of Machapuchare standing upside down in the water, and the town's Lakeside strip runs along its eastern shore with painted wooden boats lined up for hire. The boats are orange, blue and yellow, and you paddle out yourself or hire one of the lake's boatmen to row while the peaks slide past; the mountains are seventy kilometres away and 7,000 metres up, but the lake sits at 740 metres in a green bowl of hills, and on a clear dawn the distance vanishes. The short ride is to Tal Barahi, a small island at the lake's heart with a two-tiered pagoda raised in 1864 by King Kulmandan Shah to Barahi, a fierce boar-headed form of the goddess Durga, where Pokhara's families come on Saturdays with offerings and the pigeons are fed. Local legend says the lake drowned an old town: a goddess came disguised as a beggar, one couple showed her kindness, and she warned them before the flood swallowed everyone else.
The lake is also the landing strip. Paragliders launch from Sarangkot, the hill above the western shore, and ride the thermals down toward the water with the Annapurnas on one side and Phewa spread out below, landing on the shore beside the boats; Pokhara is one of the great paragliding sites of the world for that view. At sunset, when the western hills take the sun, the whole lake flares copper and orange and the paddled boats turn to silhouettes, watched from the Lakeside jetties. On the far shore the World Peace Pagoda stands on a ridge with the lake and the range in one frame. Water drawn from Phewa drove Pokhara's first power plant in 1969, and the lake is the reason the town became the base for every trek in the Annapurnas. Phewa is a lake that holds the Himalaya on its surface, and the boats row across the mountains every morning.