Varanasi to Kathmandu

Another rickshaw ride, this would be the last of India to the Station. Our train was around 1 o clock but it did not come to about 2, and we were there two hours before the train was due to take off so it felt like we were waiting for a very long time, especially since we took the morning boat ride. The train station was full of orange men. We just sat around singing different songs, from Irish songs to Bon Jovi, we covered it all. Once on the train we got ready and got to sleep pretty much straight away (for me I have Counting Crows to thank). Eventually at about 8 in the morning we arrived in Gorakhpur. Out of the train station, across the road and there was a bus to the border. Get in one guy said. “All your friends are there.” All our friends meaning all the other white people that decided to cross the border in this way. There were quite a lot of them to be honest although I don’t think any of them were from the UK. We hadn’t met many people from the UK in our travels through India. The bus was the usual cramped bumpy ride and after about 3 hours we arrived at Sunnauli, the border village between Nepal and India. It’s just a street. No other way to describe it. Either side lined with the usual drink shops, currency exchange points and the shops selling the same stuff as every other shop in India. When we jumped off the bus we were surrounded by rickshaw drivers, all telling us different distances to the border.
One guy tells me, your bag is too heavy, it is too hot to walk the 2 miles to the border. My response, its just up the street; and it was.

Up to the border and you’re told to go into this little open room. This was passport control, the guy’s that stamped you out of the country. It was nothing special at all, just a dark little room that used sunlight as its light source but spent most of the time in the shade. Fill in a little form, give them your passport and that’s it. Done stamp, you are now free to leave India. Thank F**K. Glad that was easy, it was probably the easiest thing we had done in India. Out of the room, got some money changed into Nepali Rupee’s. The exchange rate has been fixed at 1.6 for 15 maybe more years. India has had a stranglehold for a long time and Nepal doesn’t have a choice. Nepal is a poor country with no ports. Its either get your resources from China or India. Suppose for Nepal, India is the best of that bad bunch and it has not got the stability to stand on its own, with maybe 50-100 political parties.

We crossed the border and the difference was noticeable straight away. Smiling faces, less hassle, everybody saying Namaste, it already seemed better. The people are much friendlier to foreigners, in Nepal than India. There was certainly less of an attitude. Getting our visa stamps was simple, the passport control on the Nepal side were very helpful, happy cheery men having a laugh with the tourists that had crossed the border. Most people that come to Nepal get a 15 day or one month visa. Toni and I had different plans. We were staying for 3 months and we had prearranged with our friend from last year Khem to teach in a school here and stay with a host family. We had their names, but not their situation. For example my situation and Toni’s situation were very different last year. Like the UK some families are richer than others, therefore it would be nice to stay in a comfortable home after travelling in such difficult conditions in India.

The first night we stayed in Bhairawa in Nepal, just 4km from the border. We decided against going straight to Kathmandu because we were shattered. We stayed in Hotel Glasgow, a nice-ish hotel that was approximately five pound each per night. We had food, and rested. That’s all. We had an early start the next morning, a 9 hour bus to travel 250km to Kathmandu. It would be tough, but we had been use to these types of journeys. The next morning we got up and travelled to Kathmandu.

We had never seen this side of Nepal. It was beautiful. Once you passed the area of Lumbini (birth place of Buddha) it was a road, along a river in the hills. This river stretched for over 100km and it was beautiful. It didn’t get boring and I enjoyed travelling along it, knowing that eventually we would have to go quite high to get into Kathmandu Valley. I’m a little tall for these buses so it was quite difficult to sit for 9 hours with your legs jammed against the seat in front, but this was it. We had nearly finished the long travels to our destination. At one stage I had Toni sleeping on one shoulder and another man on the other. He was quite embarrassed when he woke, but it was quite funny for me.

He explained quite a bit about Nepal’s situation and told me how difficult it was for him to get Visa’s for other countries because of the number of people that flea Nepal and do not return within the time period. I was thinking it must be so difficult for somebody from here to do what I was doing. We passed Chitwan National park, which we planned to visit, seen the Gorkha region and passed lots or area’s that you could go rafting. Eventually we were getting close to Kathmandu. We started climbing this winding road and got higher and higher. I think we must have been up maybe 2500m high at least, definitely the highest I have ever been without being in a plane. Then we began the descent into Kathmandu Valley. We thought it would be easy to get to where we wanted, but at the final stop we realised we were nowhere we had been before. We were at the long distance bus stop; someway from where we had wanted to be. When we got off the bus there were a few taxi drivers waiting, but nowhere near as many as there would be in India. We wanted to go to Thamel, a tourist district in Kathmandu that we were familiar with from our last visit. One guy said he had a cheap hotel there, maybe 300-400 rupees per night and we could get a taxi for 150 because it was a few km away. The hotel he took us was on the outskirts of Thamel but it wasn’t too bad; certainly worth the money. It wasn’t where we wanted to be so we left and asked directions to some nearby bars popular with tourists like Sheesha Terrace, Buddha Bar or Reggae Reggae bar, from which, we would know where to go. After walking for maybe 15 minutes we were in the centre of Thamel and it felt good. A sense of familiarity that we hadn’t experienced on the trip before certainly cheered us up after a 9 hour bus journey. We decided to stay in Hotel Downtown that night; we got one of the better rooms for 400 rupees after some bargaining. The manager did forewarn us that the hot water didn’t work, what he didn’t explain was how cold the cold water would be. There were ice cubes coming from the shower. After getting dressed we went to one of our favourite places from the year before Sheesha Terrace. Time to get some food, chill out sitting on cushions on the floor, listening to a decent cover band. We didn’t stay out long, we were shattered. The next day it was off to meet our good friend Khyam; one of the Platform 2 leaders from our last trip. He organised our placement and our host family here in Nepal and we needed to know where we were staying and the final details about our arrangement.

It was over a year since we had seen him so it was good to catch up, discuss what we had done in India and just see a friendly face that we knew; another thing we hadn't seen in a while. He ‘explained the things’ (private platform2 joke) and told us we were free to do whatever we wanted and he would arrange to take us to the monkey temple the next morning. Once again we spent another night out in Thamel, this time in Reggae Reggae bar, just enjoying the atmosphere and talking about India, about Nepal and about our future plans. Besides Nepal, we had decided that we wouldn’t allow ourselves to be confined to dates (besides visa requirements) that we would move freely, so that we wouldn’t be stuck in a place for longer than we expected. That’s what annoyed us most about India, the lack of freedom to move, although we did agree that we had travelled to long and too far, uncomfortably in sleeper class in 28 days. It was tough going but we did pull through and I think personally it has prepared us for the worst, travelling in any other of the countries we would be visiting.

The next morning, we went to get Nepali sim cards then walked with a friend of Khyams to the Monkey Temple. This is one of the largest temples in Kathmandu Valley and although we had been here before it was still a nice walk. I’m sure some of you have seen me planking below the three golden ‘gods,’ that was at the monkey temple. I did see a monkey, hit a young boy then steal his food. Harsh, but quite funny all the same. We walked back as well; it was about 45-60 minute’s walk from our hotel, and got lunch. It was time to go meet our host family and our new home for 3 months. Im not sure what was going through Toni’s mind, but the walk around checking out everybody elses home in Sirutar last year was going through mine. Thinking to myself: ‘I could live here’ or ‘please don’t stop the car, DRIVE, DRIVE, DRIVE,’ were two common thoughts. Eventually we pulled up outside this very large house, with a big blue gate that a car could fit through and I thought Yippee. The chance of a western style toilet and warm water were the only things I had hoped for and it looked like I got lucky. I did hear a dog bark though, and I was praying to whomever that it wasn’t in this house.

Western Style Toilet – Yes
Warm Water – Yes
Dog – Yes, but inside a cage.

It could have gone a lot worse, especially after my last experience in Nepal, with squat toilet in an outhouse, water from a well to shower from and a dog that smelled horrible, not to mention my night visitors of huntsmen spiders, gecko’s and that little rat that ran round my room at night. This was a much higher standard of living that my last trip here. No mosquito net needed either. Very few mosquitoes live in Patan or Kathmandu city in general so after a few weeks we could stop taking our doxycycline (anti malaria pills).

The family consists of, Mum Depeeka, Dad Sanjaya, Eeshan little boy and grandmother. We were welcomed with juice, which was a good sign. Boy the mum and dad were at work but we were told that the mum would be arriving back very soon. Eventually the full family was together and everybody was very happy and interested to know what we were doing and what we had experienced.

It was the time I had been waiting for. Dinner time, was I about to start having rice come out my ears for three months, or would they mix it up a little?? I was panicking a little inside, not wanting to go through the same thing as last time. There it was. ROTI, a bit like tortilla bread. Thank you, thank you. I was saved from the rice. I don’t think I could have endured three months of the same food over again, too difficult and it was never good for my health. We had had a long day, and it was definitely time to sleep. Double bed. Woop Woop, still as hard as a snooker table but we could both cope with that.

I will leave it there. We’ve been flat out in school for a few weeks now and other things since we got here and not really had lots of free time so I will try to update it more when I can.

Namaste!