June 13, 2012
Editor's note: We are about a week behind on our blog posts...the date we enter at the start of each post is the date that the activity we describe in the post actually occurred. This lag exists for a number of reasons...we are busy each day actually doing the activities we describe, uploading photos and writing/editing each entry takes time, we were without Internet access for 5 days and then experienced several days of extremely slow Internet connections. We are trying our best to catch up while we are still traveling but will probably catch up completely once we are home and have fast internet access. Thanks for your understanding, and a big THANK YOU to all who are keeping up with us via this blog, is great fun to share our adventures with you...This morning we wake after a night of street noise (sounded a bit like a college town when the bars close), shoulder and neck pain from a brutally hard mattress and a thin pillow, and no air conditioning. We meet for our last meal in Tibet, and we look forward to seeing what Nepal has to offer. Because of our forced change in plans, we will have two extra days in Kathmandu so we will have more of an opportunity to experience Nepal's largest city.
Our plan for today is to get to the border a little early to try to avoid some of the craziness at the border crossing, so we hit the road and experience a non-check at the immigration station on our way out of Zhangmou. We drive a few kilometers down the road, clear another checkpoint, and then pull over to the side of the road so we can take a few minutes to properly thank Nyima and our two drivers. We thank them for their hospitality, for taking such good care of us while we were in their company, and for their warmth and friendship. We will remember each of them fondly...Nyima for her ability to help us to understand the history and culture of the Tibetan people, and our drivers for their skills in driving us across the vast stretches of Tibet. We will remember these three fondly and wish them and the Tibetan people the very best as they struggle under the oppression of the Chinese government.
Once we have said our formal goodbyes, we decide to walk for a bit in the cool of the morning. This road is called the Friendship Highway and was constructed primarily through the planning and funding of the Chinese government. The road is twisting and turning, and it is carved into the steep hillside as it winds it's way down through the valley. Across the valley is Nepal, and we get our first look at the lush Nepalese forest...
As we get closer to the border we walk past hundreds of trucks parked on the side of the road. Drivers are sleeping in their trucks, or they are gathered by a small stream falling off the hillside where they can wash up and brush their teeth, or are packed into cabs of trucks talking and smoking. They are waiting for their next load coming from China into Nepal, or heading the other way.
Our drivers come along and pick us up for the last short stretch to the bottom of the hill and the border crossing station. We walk to the border station and along the way we get a quick photo of the Friendship Bridge, the actual connection between Tibet and Nepal that we will walk across.
This is the border crossing station on the Tibet side. We are early so we wait about a half hour for the crossing to open. Travelers are processed through the building, and next to the building is the portal for vehicles. The border crossing is manned by Chinese Army personnel, and it's the usual passport check, baggage scan and metal detector scan. It's interesting...at this checkpoint the Chinese Army personnel are particularly interested in confiscating copies of the Lonely Planet guide book to Tibet that has the introduction by the Dalai Lama. Beyond that they will confiscate anything that has the Tibet flag on it, or any reference to the Dalai Lama...so they open everyone's bag to look through printed material, especially those bags that the scanner has shown to have books about the size of the Lonely Planet book.
The line today at the crossing is very short. We are told it typically winds its way out onto the street and up the hill a ways, but today it does not even extend out of the courtyard to the sidewalk. It makes us pause to think that we are basically the last of the westerners allowed into Tibet and therefore the last ones out...
This made us chuckle more than a little bit...it is a suggestion box on the wall outside the border police station on the Tibet side. Do they really think that they will get honest customer feedback while we're still under the scrutiny and control of the Chinese Army?! We deduced that a better design would be to leave the bottom of the suggestion box open and to place a garbage can directly under it...
Here's another stolen shot of the "Friendship" Bridge. This bridge is the connection between Nepal and China at this crossing, and there is a red line halfway across marking the actual border. We did not experience a lot of friendship on the bridge...when we took a photo of the bridge after passing through security we were approached by a Chinese Army member and we had to delete the photo while he watched. On the Nepal side of the bridge there were plainclothes officers keeping us from taking photos there...and these plain clothes guys looked suspiciously Chinese not Nepalese...hmmm. We're not feeling the "friendship" on the bridge....
After crossing the bridge and passing the razor wire (doesn't really convey "friendship"), we enter Nepal through a small gate, and we instantly realize we are in a different world. The street is alive with people in all manner of dress, many are loaded down with goods as though they are human pack animals headed uphill to the border. There are vehicles of all sorts...buses, trucks of all sizes, motorcycles and SUVs. A group of little ladies pass us by, each carrying a couple pieces of our group's luggage on their backs...
The first order of business is to stop in the Nepal Immigration station and get our visas. It is a small office into which all of the folks who have crossed the border with us crowd to pay their fee and get their visas. It is a very manual and paper-based process here...no computers or scanners for reviewing passports...we eventually get our visas and emerge back out onto the street and into all the commotion. We walk a short distance downhill and come to our bus which will take us into Kathmandu. We board and begin our driving experience in Nepal. The first experience is the roads and the nature of traffic here...the narrow roadway away from the border is clogged with parked trucks waiting for their loads to cross the border, and people making their way up to and down from the crossing, and log jams are common...we also get our first hint of how good the bus and truck drivers need to be here...as we routinely pass within inches of other vehicles to extricate ourselves from this bottleneck of a town.
Some of these trucks are sporting some serious bling...we'll have to check out a trim package like this for our RV...!
More scenes from the bus as we make our way down through the valleys...in some places, the locals are farming very steep hillsides by creating terraces in which they grow rice or corn...that is tough framing if you ask us...
Now, have you ever seen the TV show "Ice Road Truckers" on the Discovery Channel? Well, we lived it on this drive down from the Nepal border. We should have known the road was going to be bad when we climbed on the bus and the driver has a spotter who hangs out the window on the other side and tells him how close he is to the edge.... The roads were no more than one and a half vehicles wide at many places, and the road was a dirt path carved into the hillside with landslides on one side and sheer drops to the valley on the other. Along this road travels a steady stream of buses carrying locals and travelers, trucks carrying goods (and oftentimes people on the top of the load), and cars...and none of these vehicles want to give anyone else the right of way. That makes for some pretty impressive jam ups, and we got caught in one. We had to back the bus up a short distance and park it at the very edge of the road, and others going our direction had to do the same. Then, the opposing traffic had to try to weave through our parked-up mess, which made for some interesting moments, and some window-to-window smiles and waves as other buses pass by within inches of us...
After waiting about twenty minutes, and then weaving our way through a mess of traffic and digging equipment that was clearing away a landslide, we get back underway. We begin to notice Eco-resorts along the way, and one place where you can bungee jump...here's the bridge, but no one was jumping.
Here's an even better photo of what it looks like when the locals farm the hillsides...can you imagine having to work these terraces...or harvest from them and haul all of the rice or corn back up the hillside?!
We don't know what this family's story is, but clearly they are living a little better than ther rest of the families in town. And check out the foot bridge that the locals take from one side of the canyon to the other...that's a heck of a commute!
More scenes of life along the highway as we make our way along toward our lunch stop...
We stop for lunch (and to give our bus driver and spotter a rest) at a roadside restaurant...well, that may be a little bit of an overstatement, but it was good enough for our group!
Our lunch place was perched at the edge of a river and is popular with tour buses, but today there are only two...ours and one with Mexican tourists on it...we enjoy a cold beer and some modest food and get back underway.
As we travel along we see everyday life in this part of Nepal...open air shops and markets for locals, people swimming or bathing in the river, and more rough patches of road that require particularly skilled driving by our driver...
Eventually we make our way up over a high ridge that will take us into the Kathmandu Valley...at the top of the ridge is a town that has become popular as a weekend getaway for folks from Kathmandu...really?! When we heard this description we expected a little more refinement and upscale development...more of a resort feel, but this place appeared to have little of these attributes...a few of the apartment buildings looked a little nicer...
On our way down into the Kathmandu Valley we see some interesting sights, like fields ready for rice planting, and the world's largest metal statue of Shiva the destroyer god...and more terraces...
Then we enter Kathmandu itself...which is actually the combination to three old cities...and this place is chaotic! There are cars and buses and trucks and motorcycles weaving in and out of all the lanes, going the wrong direction in the right lane, and the right direction in the wrong lane...and the motorcycles! There are a million motorcycles! And cows! Cows are sacred here, so they just mosey across the city street or highway whenever and wherever they please, and traffic just has to accommodate them!
Interesting side note: in Kathmandu, if you hit a person with your vehicle and kill them, you can pay 10,000 rubies (about $120 U.S.) to get of jail...if you hit a cow and kill it, you go to jail for 12 years! Cows having sacred status also means that you will not find a Burger King or McDonalds in Kathmandu...
The highway we are driving on is brand new, four lanes wide...and the frontage roads are dirt and rock. Here are some scenes from the bus as we entered Kathmandu...
We survive the crazy streets of Kathmandu and make it to our hotel...the Shangri-la...and we are glad to be in K-K-K-K-K-K-Kathmandu! It has been a long day of perilous roads and honking horns, and we gladly hit happy hour before dinner. The folks in the dining room are most accommodating and move our reserved table out into the shady lawn of the garden behind the hotel, and we have a lovely dinner outside as our introduction to Kathmandu.
Our room is nice...electricity, running water (hot AND cold) and even Internet access (not free, but at least we can get reconnected and try to catch up on emails, our blog posts, news of the world, etc.). The air conditioning is not great, and it is a little warm and humid outside, but we are definitely seeing improvements in our accommodations!
Tomorrow we will begin to explore this city, but for now we are happy to wash up and get to bed...
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