Evening Boats on Phewa Lake, Pokhara

Evenings own Pokhara. By late afternoon the town starts drifting toward the water, and so did we — down to the shore of Phewa Lake (Fewa Tal, as the boatmen say it) just as the sun dropped behind the western ridges. The whole sky went from gold to this burning orange, and the lake, dead calm, held onto the colour long after the sun was gone.

What made the frame for me were the two boats. The nearer one paddled slowly across with its blue canopy folded down; further out, a boatman stood upright mid-stroke, a small dark silhouette against all that warm water. The Annapurna foothills stacked up behind them in fading layers of blue-green, each ridge a shade lighter than the one before. I kept the horizon high and let the water take most of the frame — the reflection was doing all the work.

This was the same Nepal trip that took me to the quieter Begnas Lake east of town — two lakes, two completely different moods. More from the mountains in my Himalaya Collection.