Heading into Kathmandu

Riding across the eastern portion of Nepal to Kathmandu was a 13 hr busride journey. Starting at the Nepalese town, Kakabhitta, across the border from India. I boarded the bus at 4:30 am after several hrs of attempted sleep while enduring bed bug and mosquito bites, sitting next to the other lone traveler, a Canadien girl from Toronto who had recently completed a 1 month mountaineering course in Darjeeling. The ride started off eventful enough with one of the Nepalese bus workers having to forceably pull and push an elderly Nepalese man from the back of the bus out the door in the front. Apparently the man had tried to sneak onto the bus since he didn't have the money to pay the fare. At one point the old man was on his back on the bus floor right next to our seats trying his best to hold onto one of the poles. Eventually he was loosened up and tossed out the door onto the street. Fortunately he didn't appear to be injured or broken up too bad. I would imagine scenes like this occur quite regularly as the other Nepalese on the bus barely batted their eyes.


It was quite fascinating viewing the scenery and all the little villages and life we passed through on the way. The beginning of the journey was relatively flat and across open space. However, this changed by about noon time as we started venturing higher up into the himalayas on the way to Kathmandu. Didn't get to see Mount Everest or anything, which would have been straight north on the way to Kathmandu, but we did drive through some amazing and very steep areas. The roads were perched high on the mountainsides with little to no shoulder space and drop offs of easily over 1000-2000 ft. Making it more exciting was the relative busyness of the roads and the relentless drive of the drivers to push ahead and pass upcoming traffic. Thank goodness they have such loud and noisy horns which are used nonstop, behind upcoming vehicles and going around bends.


One interesting point in the trip was passing the scene of an automobile accident. Our bus had nearly stopped and was pushing along very slow at the scene of groups of people when I witnessed through my window 2 bodies crumpled on the road. The one guys head was smashed in with his brains smothered all over the road. His leg appeared to be quite twisted around in unnatural positions as well. It was quite a shocking and morbid visual. My neighbor Andrea was quite shaken. About 20 more feet up the road was a large truck with a motorbike underneath it's front end sticking out. I'm sure scenes like this are fairly common with the chaotic driving habits of the Nepalese and Indian drivers. Reading the local papers I often come across stories of road accidents and buses driving off the road over cliffs.


Eventually our bus made it into Kathmandu 13 hrs after we started. Several days later I just happened to bump into my friends, Hayden and Lee, who I had separated from two days before in Sikkim. They said their bustrip took over 19 hrs and included a flat tire and other vehicular problems.

Kathmandu is nestled in a valley and is commonly referred to as the Kathmandu Valley. We arrived around 6 or 7pm and were instantly surrounded by mobs of taxis drivers and other Nepalese offering their annoying and in your face assistance. The common area for tourists and travelers in Kathmandu is known as Thamel. Andrea and I got ourselves a taxi to that area where she had make prior reservations and was to be meeting with friends the following day at a local guesthouse. Driving in in a taxi we just happened to be dropped off right across the street from where Andrea had made reservations. This was lucky since the Thamel area is not that particularly small and includes what seems to be hundreds of guesthouses and hotels. The taxi driver and his friend tried to scam us into paying Indian rupees instead of Nepalese rupees, which of course they hadn't said anything about at the beginning. The Indian rupee is worth a little over 1.5 times more than the Nepalese counterpart. Hence once gets 160 Nepalese rupees to 100 Indian rupees. It was amusing how nonchantly they went about trying to scam us to make a few extra rupees for themselves, as if it would be obvious they wanted Indian rupees instead of Nepalese rupees whiles in Nepal.