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Published: August 15th 2007
Out of Kathmandu at last.
I bought some more bungy cord off these fellas.Jazz Club
Due to sickness and socialising it took me longer than expected to leave Kathmandu and start my trip to India. I'd heard that there was an excellent jazz club about 20 minutes walk from Thamel and so the evening after meeting Sayed, Terri and Chanel for a goodbye (or is it just "au revoir"?) dinner, Jessica and I wandered along the busy street to "Jazz Upstairs" to meet Dessie, a lovely, ex-army English bloke that customises Enfields for a living. I'd barely sipped my first beer when who should turn up but The Hilarious Italians, Frede and Davide. They'd just come back from what had turned out to be a monk-smuggling trip to Tibet. An excellent evening unfolded as we sat back and enjoyed the technically supreme jazz-funk sounds of the live Spanish-Nepali band. On the way back from the club we spotted some enormous flying-fox bats in the trees that line the street. I'm glad I kept my mouth closed as I looked up as one of the, to be honest, disgusting-looking creatures spotted us too. Nice.
Giardia
Giardia is a water-borne parasite that causes you not to want to stray too far from the lav. Unluckily
The magnificent 350cc Enfield Bullet
...all I need now is a twisty road... for me some giardia had made it's home in my stomach and the next morning I felt terrible, so I spent the day gobbling Tinidazole tablets and watching tv, three, sometimes agonisingly distant, steps from the bathroom. I felt I'd spent too long in Kathmandu and I knew it was a long way to get to Manali in Himachal Pradesh, so I resolved to leave the following morning.
After a good night's sleep I wobbled down the stairs of the hotel to put my bags on the bike. It soon became apparent that I'd far too much luggage for the bike and that as I could barely lift my rucksack that I was far too weak to ride anywhere, so I posted some belongings home, gave some to the bloke that cleans the rooms and spent another day watching tv.
Leaving at last!
The following morning, feeling a lot stronger and with a lot less to carry, I packed the bike, ate some breakfast and with absolutely perfect timing hit the Kathmandu ring road at the peak of rush-hour. A couple of hours later I'd battled my way out of Kathmandu and, turning left at Naubisse, was on
A twisty road
...excellent... the twisty road up to Daman. As it's not very wide road, there isn't much traffic and so I had it to myself for most of the way, climbing to 2400M and into the clouds. I rested at the Everest Panorama Lodge and after lunch there the clouds cleared somewhat giving me an excellent view of the Himalayan mountains. I decided the chances of it clearing enough to see Everest weren't good and so pressed on to the next town.
The road wound it's way down through toe-to-toe corners for about four hours until it reached the busy town of Hetauda where I stayed the night in the Avocado and Orchid Hotel, chatting with a couple of pessimistic American bikers who said I'd never get my Indian-plated machine across the border without paying a barrow load of baksheesh, especially as I didn't have the required, and somewhat mythical, "entry papers".
Chitwan National Park
I wasn't sure where I'd stop the following day. I'd decided to head across the Mahendra Highway which cuts a swathe through the lower half of Nepal, across the Terai and to the Indian border. I'd briefly considered heading south to India from Hetauda and
heading to Manali via Delhi, but after Claudia, a German biker who'd ridden solo from Europe to Nepal, told me she'd rather "cut off her own head than travel through Uttar Pradesh", I decided against it.
After three hours I came to the turning for Chitwan National Park. I quite liked the idea of taking an elephant safari and so headed down to Soraha, finding a place to stay in one of the stilted tourist lodges on the edge of a river. After lunch I arranged an elephant safari for the following morning and as it was so hot and humid, spent the rest of the day sitting at the water's edge.
The high temperature and horrible humidity meant that the few idiots that decided to go to the park anway had the place to themselves. As a result, at six o'clock the next morning I was sitting on my own on the back of an enormous elephant. We wandered through the jungle and eventually found a rhinocerous and her baby, chilling out in a puddle of mud. After that it was back to the river to wash the elephant. In return, she gave me a shower of
river water. It was great fun!
Birthplace of Buddha - no wonder he left!
After an uncomfortably warm night I hit the road once more, this time heading for Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha. I'd been told that unless I was a buddhist there wasn't much point in visiting Lumbini, but since it was on my way and not having been to India yet, I thought I'd pop in.
I checked in to the most depressing hostel so far, but there really wasn't much choice. The people running the place were very friendly and helpful, but the room was incredibly dingy and damp. The cockroaches didn't seem to mind, though and were having a great time wandering round, all big and cockroachy. I headed out to wander round the town of Lumbini, which didn't take long as there's only the one short street. After a couple of hours rickshaw ride round the mostly unfinished temples of what will be a kind of Disneyland for buddhists I headed back to Lumbini village in time to catch the colourful, vibrant market, where the locals traded in fruit and veg. It cheered me right up and I bought a couple of
Wild rhino...
...wild? She was livid! delicious mangos to celebrate. There weren't any restaurants to speak of in the village and the guide book recommended eating in your hostel so I headed back to the dinge of the guest house for a disappointing dinner. Well, not that disappointing as there were two beautful Dutch girls having their dinner there too.
Mahendra Nagar
After a night spent lying in a tepid pool of my own sweat, I got up at dawn to head as far west as possible along the Mahendra Highway. I needed to get out of the heat and into the mountains as soon as possible. Someone had been mucking about on my bike during the night and the choke was wide open. I didn't notice and when the bike came to a halt with a flooded engine about kilometer out of Lumbini I got one of the locals to push me to a petrol station. I'd plenty of fuel and by a process of elimination worked out what the problem was. Shortly, I was on my way again. I got a bit lost trying a short cut back to the highway, getting directions from a local that meant crossing a very deep and
fast flowing river. I passed him again on my return and he said he didn't realise I meant "on my bike". As someone said in a film, if a short cut was easy then it would just be "the way".
A couple of wrong turns later and I found my way along a gravel track that I now look back on as one of the good roads, but at the time thought was awful. Flooring it, or whatever the equivalent is on a bike, I managed to achieve a top speed of 70kph and by 12.30 I'd made it to Kohalpur where I stopped for lunch with some more friendly locals. They advised me I should spend the night in their prison-like hotel as the road would have completely melted. I decided to take my chances and head to Mahendra Nagar, the last town before India, as the only way to cool down was to be in the breeze on the back of the bike.
For a few refreshing kilometres the road wound its way up into some hills. This was more like it. At least until I reached a diversion because of a landslide. I was directed
off the road and down into a Junior Kickstart course, full of puddles the size of small swimming pools containing rocks the size of, well, big rocks. With the voice of Peter Purves in my head telling me to keep my revs high, I went for it, managing to avoid most of the large boulders as the water came up over the top of my boots. It may actually have been easier to drive through the landslide.
Down the other side of the hills and through the Bardia National park the scenery was stunning. The heavens opened a couple of times and I got soaked to the skin, only to have the incredible heat completely dry me off half an hour later. Eventually I arrived in the border town of Mahendra Nagar where I spent the night.
Shenanigans
The next morning I had to wait for the bank's phone to work so the manager could call the head office in Delhi to get the Sterling exchange rate in order to cash my travellers cheques. "Indian Rupees", I said, as I would be in India in a matter of minutes, or so I thought. A couple of hours later,
I was walking back to my bike with a wad of cash.
I headed to the border where I had to stop at customs. "You don't have entry papers", said the official. "No", I said, "Is there a 'fine' I can pay?" I asked using the commonly used euphemism for baksheesh. There wasn't and there was no way round this problem, at least for the time being. Without the entry papers, the customs guy didn't know how much tax to charge me for having an Indian-plated bike in Nepal. I steered the conversation away from the possibility of my bike being stolen and made myself comfortable expecting a long stay in the customs kiosk. Shortly, another bloked turned up and said "English man is good man". That was good enough for the other fellow and so they said I could continue.
Across the no-mans land between Nepal and India, that really did look like a no-mans land between the trenches of World War 1, I tried to enter India without first having being checked out of Nepal, so back I went to see the nice man at Nepal Immigration. He stamped my passport and wished me a safe
trip. It was sad to be leaving Nepal.
I followed a crowd of other people, some on bikes, some in cars, some on motorbikes, back towards the Indian border. After a few minutes one of the blokes stopped me and asked me the rather stupid, or so I thought then, question, "Are you going to India." After I replied to the affirmative he told me it was the other way and that I'd accidentally joined a funeral procession.
Eventually I got my passport stamped by a bloke with badly died red hair and made my way across a bridge where the security guards were a bit touchy to say the least about me taking a photograph. How was I to know it was a high security area?
After having to quickly reverse the bike back off the bridge to let an enormous truck across first, I made my way across and was at last in India.
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Mike Beckwith
non-member comment
what can I say...
Fabulous Chris, the blogs make for an enormously enjoyable read. Very Jealous. There does seem to be a drastic time lag in receiving the more recent editions, only a couple of months or so, not so bad for the subcontinent I suppose. One Question: where are you now?