Blogs from Lumbini, Nepal, Asia - page 4

Nu ben ik echt aan het rondreizen. In het begin van deze week ben ik naar Tansen gereisd. Omdat er een staking was van de bussen in Pokhara ben ik vertrokken in een mini-busje. Opeengepropt met 10 Nepalezen, waarvan 2 wagenziekte hadden en hun Dal Baath (locale voedsel) van de ochtend eruit gooiden. Al slingerend door de Bergen vervolgden we onze reis. Meestal als je na een tijdje onderweg bent vragen ze je te betalen. Aan mij vroegen ze het dubbele, na een tijdje onderhandelen kwam ik toch op de prijs uit die een Nepalees voor de reis moet betalen. Halverwege op mijn reis naar Tansen werd ik uit het busje gegooid. Oftewel ik zag dat ze mijn rugzak van het dak van het busje haalden, dit was een goede hint. Ik was nu helemaal in ... read more

Crossing borders is, without a doubt, one of the most stressful aspects of travelling for me. Previous nightmares include: 1) Being aggressively woken from sleep (when crossing from Romania to Bulgaria) with the butt of a gun belonging to an armed guard who then ran off the train with my passport and ticket. 2) A very sweaty 27 hour bus journey from Nepal to India (2003) followed by officials refusing to believe that the picture of the girl in Rebecca Jane Lidster’s passport was actually me! Having survived these, and many other incidents, I thought I was prepared for anything. Experienced, confident, raring to go. When will I learn?! In an attempt to avoid any ridiculously long journeys, and to make the process of getting to India as interesting as possible, we decided to make a ... read more

From Pokara we made our way south to India via the birthplace of Buddha. After taking some sketchy modes of transport including crazy buses, random 4x4 cars and trains where we kept everything locked to our person for fear of getting robbed we arrived in crazy Delhi.... read more

5:15 pm 3/19/07 Parasi, Nawal Parasi Province, Nepal (just east of Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha): Back at the cyber cafe for another quick interview and a few more pictures. I'm the only one here, so the speed is much faster than yesterday with all of the kids chatting on yahoo! Only took 5 minutes to log into the blog... Today was a pretty mellow day - just got out of the Filters for Families compound on the outskirts of town (it is the home of the former police chief and his family; the locals ran him out of town a year ago; he is now in Kathmandu as a Secretary in the new government). Much hotter today, probably 85 degrees with 95 percent humidity. The house is solid concrete, though, so is very cool on ... read more

Up at the very un-Christmassy hour of 4.30am to get a good start on the drive from Varanasi to the Nepali border. As we were getting in the four-wheel-drives Bill the leader handed us all little boxes and cards- very sweet of him, even if it most likely is covered by the company as trip expenses. They turned out to be small handpainted miniature Hindu gods and goddesses- I haven't identified mine yet, seems to be a minor one. Driving towards the border I would occasionally drop off but my head banging on the window would put an end to that pretty quickly. After about 3 hours we stopped at a "tourist restaurant" but apparently we were the first foreign tourists who had ever dropped in, they usually had Indian families. Much excitement ensued among the ... read more