The custom at this boarder is an adventure. You get the stamp from the chinese boarder and then you are in the nowhereland between 2 countries (this reminded us of the movie „The Terminal“). Ahead you have a 8km long bumpy road and again about 400 meter of altitude difference. So we got a „boarder“taxi to reach the nepali custom. Some years ago you had to walk the whole way down by foot! Uffh, lucky we 😉
Then we had to cross a bridge and just in the middle of it the cars change the lines.
Nepalis drives most of the time on the left side 😉 We got there our stamp and shared with 3 other germans a small bus. We put our luggage on the roof, hopped in and started to drive. On the top of our luggage there were several people sitting, we told this to our driver but for him that wasn’t a problem. After an exhausting discussion about the prize we started our journey. After 5 minutes we had to stop, because the road had disappeared! The river just had destroyed it. An excavator tried to fix it.
We just dreamed minutes before that everything is easier and nicer in Nepal than in Tibet, but the start was as hard as it could be!
and everybody from the village was there to enjoy the spectacle
What a hugh line of trucks and buses!
At this stop they putted also a raincover over our luggage. But then they just wanted to put us out of the bus because of the long queue and wanted us to look for a bus on the other side of the landslide. But there was no change to get a free place on the other side of the landslide and so, Katja fighted with them until they agreed to drive us for the fixed price on to Kathmandu. But because the buses from the other side had priority to pass the landslide and every bus destroyed once again the fixed road by trying hard to surpass the steep „road“ we had enough time to observe the spectacle. The boys jumped out of our bus and were so fascinated of this repairwork they didn’t notice that the busdriver in a little free spot just started the engine and drove through the landslide. The girls shouted to get them on the bus, so they had to run over the landslide and got in the bus just after the landslide. Then we tried somehow to pass the bunch of trucks queueing up to pass from the other side but there was no space for another car. But that didn’t seem to be a problem for nepali because every car has a horn 🙂 and know the size of his car. After passing the queue there was still someone sitting on our roof and as we told this once again to our driver he sad:“ yeah, that is our driver“ ! ? ! We didn’t know what is a second driver for on the roof but there was no further explanation to this topic…
Some hours later, after we had passed several military check points and had overtaken a lot of slower trucks we got closer to Kathmandu, the capitol of Nepal and our final destination for today. Our first driver (in the car) stopped and the driver from the roof hopped in and sat beside the first driver and took the stearingwheel. Now in the front where seating 4 Persons… Somehow they could manage to drive our car by two. In Kathmandu all of us checked in at the same Hotel close to the Thamel district, the center of the city.
After this trip over the Himalayan we were a bit exhausted. We stayed more days in the city as we expected and still spent our time with the canadian couple.We had nearly the same plans and it was nice to have some company and we went really good along with eachother. During this days we made some shopping and sightseeing, in this narrow streets with all these tiny shops you can spend hours and enjoyed as well the luxury life beeing in a hotel with roomservice and tv!
One day we went to the monkey temple where you have a great view over the city and it is a really nice sight.
Another nice place which is worth a look at is the durbar square (durbar means palace). Most of the square dates from the 17th and 18th centuries. This was the place where the city’s kings were once crowned and legitimised and from where they ruled. The king has moved to another place a century ago but the square remains still the traditional heart of the old town and a spectacular legacy of traditional architecture.
Katja and our Canadian friend Lonna got sick after a „western“ dinner that we had to stay 2 nights more. But that is not a big problem in Kathmandu then there is a lot going on during day and you won’t be bored. As the fever has gone and the lady’s had enough energy for a bus ride we left the capitol for Chitwan. That is a national park in the south of Nepal. Because the roads are in a such bad condition, we had about 5 hours to arrive the 120 km far away town Sauraha. As we finally got there it started to rain heavely and it was really humid, nearly unbearable, yeah, we were in the Jungle!