The loooong way round
Started my trip with a 17 hour train ride, no fun travelers to hang with this time, just me, and the only female in the entire carrige! There is far too many men in India! So the usual being stared at the entire time, but uneventful other than that. Arrived at the border town midmorning and headed off in search of immiagration. I found a german guy on the way so we rickshawed over to the border together. I ended up having to get passport photos because I thought I had lost my spares, turns out of course I found them later that night.
The whole border/immigration thing was as expected hilariously official and compleately useless with 1 guy with too much power. Indian side was this one guy behind a big desk just laughing to himself the whole time and gave the impression that if you pissed him off he just wouldn’t give you an exit stamp and would probably talk off for a luch break at any second. After 45mins we both finally had our stamps (after it broke in his hand) I managed to avoid the 100 rp ‘fee’ for a form I had to fill in. Fighting off rickshaw drivers we walked out of India and into Nepal. Another interesting immigration and another 100 rp fee which I ended up paying but the German guy just flat out refused and they let him go! Always interesting. Then started the long task of finding a bus, according to both of our guide books there were buses going every hour. After finally getting to the bus stop as rickshaws keep dropping us off at tourist offices, we find out there are no more buses. There was no way I was going to stay in the dodgy, dirty, hassle central border town and sure there must be some way I ended up jumping on an overcrowded bus to a town where I thought I could change. The german guy was off in a different direction so we both got on our dody looking buses and headed off. Typically the bus stalled everytime we stopped (which was ofter to let more people on) and we dodged potholes the whole 5 hours. We rolled into this random town about 6pm and it was already dark and after the first bus experience I wasn’t to keen on getting on another 5 hour journey in the dark so I found a nice hotel and stayed there for the night. The next morning I found out there were no buses till the afternoon only mini vans to Kathmandu. So I squished myself in another overcrowded vehicle with my bag on the roof, all I could think about was my guidebooks warning to NEVER take minivans as the frequently crash and to quote “No-one survives mini van crashes.” Apart from being uncomfortable, far too overcrowded and my stomach regretting the big glass of milk for breakfast, I arrived in tact.
Now the other problem was that I still had no Nepalese money, only Indian rupees which were OK for the hotel and the buses but now to try and get somewhere from the outskirts of Kathmandu to my hotel was a nightmare as noone would accept them or would charge a ridiculous amount if I tried to pay with them. Managed to get in a little van that’s like a bus, just smaller, and got dropped off somewhere central so I could walk to my hotel. First too places I looked at were either full or getting renovated finally found somewhere and collapsed into bed, almost 48 hours since I left Kolkata to get to my destination!
Tags: Nepal, Travel
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