Nepal Border Crossing and Kathmandu

17/11/2007
In Zhongmu we put our feet up and relaxed before getting ready to head across the border into Nepal. It was a chance to refect on what we had seen and experienced in the last few days and of course to toast the happy couple. We had met a German man named Harald that evening and he asked to accompany us. That brought our party to 4 and meant that the trip to Kathmandu would be that much cheaper. Harald it turns out had done the Trans Siberian Express 40 years ago and it was interesting to hear him recall what he had experienced compared with ourselves. Russia would have been a very different place back then.

Our friend from the guesthouse brought us down to the border where we went through Chinese border control. Once through here we had a 6 km journey down to the border, once again our resourceful Tibetan friend came to the fore, he arranged for all of us to get a lift. 6 people altogether piled into a van about the size of a loaf of bread. Now with rucksacks in tow it was a bit of a squeeze but still better than a 6 km walk.

The border town of Kodari, which is the border town with Zhongmu, was a crazy spot. There was a vast array of people and trucks all lined up to cross the border into Tibet. There was also a large selection of traders on the border. Everything and everyone is just kind of thrown together in a haphazard kind of way and we have to weave out way through the crowd. The truck drivers were trying to do something similar. After the relative tranquility of Tibet this was a bit of a culture shock.

We crossed the Friendship bridge between Tibet and Nepal. This bridge was rebuilt in 1985, after the original was destroyed in a monsoon. We needed to pass emigration here as well and it was here that our Tibetan friend really came into his own. He hopped in behind the desk with the Visa officials and helped them with the visa registration. After doing this he then arranged for a guy to bring us to Kathmandu and negotiated a good price of about 500Y for us. To be honest I had been very wary of this guy, he was being way too helpful if you know what I mean. But at the end he gave myself and Pete and big hug and gave the girls a peck on the cheek and was on his way. He asked us for nothing and was genuinely a nice guy. Shame on me!

Next we all loaded into a TATA Land Cruiser type of thing and headed in the direction of Kathmandu. Negotiating out of Kodari was not an easy undertaking. We seen scores more trucks and buses with people jammed into and on them. The trucks are mighty impressive though, the Nepalese love to dress them up inside and out, all possible space including any spare room on the drivers seat was being used. Outside with a collection of colours that are meant to bring luck and inside with more colours and bunting and religious paraphenalia than you could shake a stick at.

The drive out of Kodari is beautiful though. We were dropping in altitude all the way and the weather was getting progressively warmer. The barren landscape we saw the day before gave way to Jungle and lush countryside, with Banana and Papaya trees in plentiful supply. This morning, almost religiously, we had donned the layers of clothing that had stood us in good stead in Tibet, but now we were starting to bake.

The road we followed was quite twisty with several patches of gravel here and there. This we were informed was as a result of landslides that habitually happen in the rainy season. Another feature of our passage was the amount of military checkpoints. The reason for this was that at this time there was a bit of an uneasy truce in Nepal between the government and the Maoists. A bloody civil war had raged for 10 years and 12 months ago a ceasefire was called that was being overseen by the UN.

At this time Nepal was making the transition from a monarchy to a republic. There was no official government or constitution in place and negotiations to get this place were dragging out and the locals were a little uneasy about this. Since we left the elections have taken place and Maoists romped home. Its difficult to know how this will pan out because when we were there they were not held in good regards by the press there and seemed synonymous with violence, extortion and kidnapping. Whether they can move away from this now they are the legitimate government remains to be seen. I genuinely hope so.

As we drove along the road the driver would stop habitually at various places. We got a glimpse of Everest from the Nepali side for instance and various other ranges here in the Himalaya's. In all instances the view was spectacular. In the foreground you would see sloping green hills and way off in the distance you would see the formidable snowy peaks of the Himalaya's. They were that far off that they almost resembled clouds in the sky until you took another look.

We rolled into Kathmandu at around 5.00 PM and asked the driver to drop us in the Thamel district. It had been a long day and we were feeling a bit tired and grumpy. So not the best time for our German companion to start getting on peoples nerves. He gave us the impression that we couldn't be trusted to find somewhere suitable to sleep and started saying over and over that we must find somewhere safe and clean and that we must inspect it first. After bailing him out in Zhongmu and offering him a place in our transport to Kathmandu we had saved him a substantial amount of money it was a bit of a slap in the face for him to treat us like we're morons! We arrived at where we needed to be and after a quick inspection we told him we were staying here, in a like it or lump it kind of way... he liked the place too.

Before we were finished the drivers tried to throw a spanner in the works. We handed him over the 500Y we had agreed at Kodari and he started to kick up a fuss, claiming that we owed him 5000R. He started to kick up a fuss and people started to gather around and he started remonstrating to them that we were cheating him. Now this is a act that we had seen a few times along the trip, and we were having none of it. The difference was 800R, but we had negotiated the price clearly with him in Kodari so I told him this and threw the 500Y at him and told him where to go.

At the same time as this was going on Harald was pulling another doozy. He claimed that his bag had been stolen and was looking at me to do something. He started pulling at stuff and saying that he had told me to watch everything. Now we had helped him with his bags but the one that was "missing" was one he had carried all along. He was pulling at stuff in the jeep and dropped a box of brandy that the driver had been transporting. I took one look in the boot and the bag was in plain view under the back seat. At this stage I just wanted to get into my room and lock the door.

We got up to the room, had a shower and lay down for an hour before getting up to get something to eat. We went out onto the street to see what Kathmandu had to offer and we bumped into an old friend from Lhasa. It was a guy from Galway called Conor. He had been in Nepal before Lhasa so he knew Kathmandu inside and he invited us to join him for dinner, he said it was an authentic Nepalese place and it sounded good to us.

The place was called Momo's and didn't look like much from the outside but the place was packed with locals and the smell out of the kitchen was good. We bailed in and ordered Dhaal Bhaats all around. Dhaal Bhaat is the staple diet of the Nepalese and the eat 3 times a day. It translates to lentil and rice and is a curry dish with lentil soup. Delicious stuff has to be said. We washed it all down with some Everest beer and recounted stories from Tibet. Good relaxing fun after the day we had

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