Day 10
[ Back ] [ Home ] [ Up ] [ Next ]

Day 10: Sunday 8th December

Drive to Nepal border; picnic lunch with sliced cheese; book into the Hotel Yeti; drinks at the staff bar.

An early-morning knock on the door from Clare, who's not trusting the front desk after yesterday - only to be followed a few minutes later by a phone call from the front desk.

Breakfast is a covert affair, stealing hard-boiled eggs and anything else for lunch.

Check out and depart by coach.

Snack/tea break at 'Haversham Hotel' with what I think is a wash-room next door. The hotel is completely empty, apart from a very warm welcome and the tea and coffee.

At every toll-booth en route there is an insistent "Hello... hello... hello..." repeating incessantly.

Lunch is held picnic-style off the side of the road (to the amusement of some locals). I carefully slice canned cheese into sticks whereas chef Clare hacks it into the pieces before serving it up one hour before I do. There's also crisps, tomatoes, and chocolates in our bounty. And, of course, hard-boiled eggs.

A few (somewhat mute) locals come up to stare at us and Clare loads up the man's food sling with bits left over from the picnic.

It's another 6 hours to the border with Nepal - the exhaustion shows. The countryside turns from urban dust to green, paddy fields, and some very expensive houses in the towns (e.g. Gorakhpur), including a big Amway building!

And so to the border. Complete mayhem! Everyone tries to change money no the Indian side of the border, and they're just not ready (or motivated!) to do it! Spreading out to two money exchanges speeds things up only a tiny tiny bit.

Immediately next door to the money changer is the Indian immigration where your Indian visa is tested with UV (a strange sight indeed in this land) and then you walk over to the Nepalese immigration, which is a small building on the Nepal side. The bags, meanwhile, are rickshawed over. The Nepal immigration is slow, but efficient; once we're all cleared (Clare and someone else are getting weird visas) we get onto a minibus and leave. From chaotic India to peaceful Nepal!

We have to stop many times at checkpoints (searching for Maoist Separatists). Our Nepalise driver and his assistant consistently have to prove who they are, but we, with the white faces, seem immune from extensive inquiry - we are stopped once and fly through a second checkpoint.

The environment we fly by is a serene change - chairs and tables outside shops, closed drains, neat & tidy shops.

Arrive at the Hotel Yeti in Bhairahawa/Bhairawa. This little hotel is amazingly efficient - rows of keys are laid out as ordered by Clare and there's no calls for 'baksheesh'; in the room (I'm still with Alex) all you hear from outside is the muted sound of talking and the occasional bike bell - remarkable! While I'm having my shower the lights all go off (a power cut at last!), and this happens again at dinner, later.

Before lunch Alex and I nip outside for some nibbles for tomorrow (long coach journey). There's a supermarket on the corner - with a friendly policeman outside - and absolutely no hawkers.

Dinner is preceded by drinks in the staff bar behind the restaurant and beside the kitchen. We are so immersed in chatting and drinking the poor chef has to retrieve the soup and reheat it - it's worth it: the food's very good - it's more Chinese-style here. The service... well, it's just amazing; they are genuinely pleased to have us here! And the oranges... are green (when the lights are on!).