Journey to Nepal

I’ve just arrived in Tansen, in Nepal. And am sipping Everest beer and waiting for my momos. I’ve headed up here with Jon, A Spaniard from my guest house in Varanasi who needed to jump the border to renew his visa.

On the first day we had a 16 hour bus journey to the border which we passed with a few movies on the laptop. Luckily the bus wasn’t full so we had room the move about.
We crossed the border at about 9pm. It is the slackest border I have ever seen. Hell even going to Wales the stop you and demand £5.40. Here you can just walk straight through. In fact I had to wander around in Nepal for 30 mins before to get a photocopy of my passport (with no currency) before returning to the border to get the visa.
We found a nice hotel for about £4 each. In the restaurant we met a couple of Germans a bit older than us and I stayed up drinking a few beers with the German chap.

He grew up in East Germany and was studying near Berlin in ’89 so was there when the wall came down. Having been there last year it was really nice to get a personal account of the events. The first thing he and his friends did was to go to the most famous drinking street in the West, negotiate a rate for east marks to Deutsch marks in a bar and got a beer. He still has the glass it came in to this day. Was really touching, he even had a tear in his eye saying what a happy day it was. He dislikes what Berlin has become now. But I think it’s recent history has given it a culture with a reverence for authority and rules, which is one of the things I liked about the place.

This morning I tried to use the only ATM in town again, but it was still out of order, so I wandered back into India but there isn’t one on that side of the border either so I was beginning to think we’d be stuck here as Jon was running out of Indian rupees and I had none left at all. Finally the ATM started working so by midday we could leave.
Tansen is off the beaten track so we had to get 3 busses to get here. The first 5km hop we where on the roof of the bus with all the luggage. Was loads of fun but I’m glad it was a good road.
The Third bus took us finally off the great Indian plain and into the Himalayan foot hills. I say foot hills, but these things make the black mountains look like mole hills. I’m (only!!) at 1400m here. It really is spectacular. Although the visibility is quite low. There was a delay when we ran out of diesel but a passing lorry let us siphon off enough to get to a petrol station.

Now we’re here enjoying food and beer.
The people here seem much more relaxed than the Indians it feels weird walking down the street without being hassled to go to a shop
or something. It’s really nice.

Life is good

Jon on top of the bus