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February 5th 2012

Published: February 5th 2012

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BrianandTanja

Chitwan park

Well, I know Brian promised to post the blog about Nepal before we had left the country, but surprise, surprise, we have been in Thailand for a week now, and still no blog about Nepal (Not sure how this got past the editor!!)… Brian is busy doing much needed maintenance on the bikes for a few days, which gives me (Tanja) some time to write about Nepal for a change.

Crossing the border

Crossing the border from India into Nepal was actually relatively easy, but took ages. We therefore decided to spend the night in the border town before heading to Chitwan National Park the following day. Many people have said that after riding in India, Nepal feels like an oasis of peace, and that is exactly how we felt when we got to Chitwan. We stayed in a sleepy touristy village and had loads of time to relax, eat good food, see the elephants getting washed in the river and do some fun bike rides in the forest.

We also did a jeep safari and saw loads of wild life, like crocodiles, rhinos, deer, monkeys and even a python (although the python was miles

Chitwan

away and we could only vaguely see something in the bushes; the guide obviously knew were it was living)!

Lakeside at Pokhara

After Chitwan we rode to Kathmandu to sort out our flights to Bangkok, before going to Pokhara. I was really looking forward to going back to Pokhara as I used to work there for a paragliding company six years ago. At that time there were two paragliding companies, at the moment there are 15! I had already heard about it, but it still came as a shock to see so many and it looked dangerously busy in the sky at times. Even Sam, who used to be the driver, now has his own company. Worse even, he tried to sell us both a flight. Yeah, right.

I met up with old friends, we ate lots of good food, drank wine, did some really cool off road rides, watched the paragliders on the take off and landing sites and just relaxed a lot. Nothing too exiting to write about really.

After 10 days we made it back to chilly Kathmandu and prepared to put our bikes on a plane to Bangkok. We got delayed by

Banana feeding time

a day because of a general strike started by students because of the increasing fuel price (about a euro a litre at the moment). Their idea of a strike is somewhat different to ours; in Nepal when there is a strike, no shops are allowed to open and no transport is allowed to go on the roads (except for tourist buses) so it is all a bit forced. Anyway, we sorted the bikes the next day and prayed that the bikes would make it all right to Thailand…

Thailand

…which they did as we are now in Bangkok. We spent a full day from 8.30am till 7pm at the airport getting the bikes out of customs and re-assembling them, but that was somewhat expected. We had ordered some parts from the UK that are impossible to get here, while we went to some beach town, and are now back in Bangkok working on the bikes.

From here, we’ll head south and cross into Malaysia. I promise we’ll have more exciting stuff to write about next time.

Additional photos below

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