We saw Uncle Daz off at the train station as he was heading to Agra and we were on our way to Nepal. The journey from Ramnagar (India) to Pokhara (Nepal) was about 24 hours in total so we decided to split the journey and stay at the border on the first night and cross the follwoing morning. We had to get a bus from Ramnagar to Haldwani, where we had to hang off the side of the bus true indian style to get there, which took about an hour. Then we had to get another bus to Banbassa, which took about 4 hours and was suprisingly non eventful. Banbassa was a true transit village with only a handful of guesthouses and a few restaurants, which didn't have any english menu's so we ordered our food on what it looked like, which turned out to be ok! We asked a few people about what time the buses leave to Pokhara from Mahedranagar (Nepal border village) but every answer was different so we decided to stick with the travel agents answer, which was around 3pm.
We had a good lie in and set off at 12 pm. The distance from Banbassa to Mahedranagar was about 10 km and the only way to get there was by walking, cycle rickshaw or horse and cart. We opted for the cycle rickshaw, which cost us a 100 rupees each and then sat back while they did all the work. As we already got our Nepalese visa from Delhi, crossing the border was very easy. We had to fill a form on the Indian side and fill another form on the Nepali side, which took about 1 hour in total and had no security checks. That would never happen in England!!! The next bus was from the border to Mahedranagr bus station, which was about 5km away and this time we had to sit on the roof of the bus, with the rest of the locals. Yet again, we are travelling in style!! We just got there in time for the last bus to Pokhara (2.25pm- 800 Nepali rupees), which was quite lucky otherwise we would have been stranded.
The bus journey took 18 hours in total, with so many stops for the nepali army/police to check our bus. The longest we drove without stopping would be about an hour so if he didn't stop, we would have got there a lot earlier. One of the stops was at a local vilage to pick up about 15 huge bags of rice, which took up the back seats and the whole aisle of the bus so we had to crawl to get on/off the bus. We stopped off for food at 8pm, which the Nepali people told us it was breakfast, We had 3 plates of chicken chowmein each, which was probably the best and spiciest breakfast I've ever had. I dont think it was meant for a food stop because they were fixing the puncture of the back tyre as we were eating but we were too hungry to care. This is where we met our main man Jonny from Chinese customs. He quickly introduced himself and started promising us Nepali, Tibetan and Chinese girls if we come to visit him at Chinese customs. Obviously he was pissed so I decided to video him, while he taught us naughty words in Nepali. Our next food stop was at 1am, which i think was lunch and we had to eat the local Nepali food. Luckily we had a few guys helping us choose and order the food so it turned out to be ok! We never got to change our Indian rupees to Nepali rupees but they happily accept Indian rupees by using the conversion rate.
We arrived in Pokhara around 9am and had very limited sleep, with the rice bags cramping us up. When we got our bags out of the boot, we realised that they had goats in the same boot as where Danny's bag was and it was blessed with goat piss, which he weren't too happy about. But wiped it down with one of the headrest covers from the bus. Once we checked into our hotel, the rest of the day was spent buying some trekking gear for our trek up into the Annapurna region (Himalayas). Pokhara itself was very different to India. It was very clean, colder and had better quality restaurants for us to eat in.
No comments:
Post a Comment