NEPAL,
After a long stay (19 days, which seemed a lot longer), I busted through the boarder into Nepal. My biggest mistake was being cheap and only getting a 15 day visa which you must pay in USD for ($25). The Boarder town on Sunali which is both India and Nepal, is very representative of India, cluttered, dirty, people haggling you to buy just about anything. Needless to say I was NOT interested in staying in Sunali longer than I had to. Unfortunately I just missed the bus to Pokhara so I was forced to sit around for an extra 3 hours. Instead I asked a tour company how much it would be for a private van and seeing it was only $15usd for a 6 hour van ride in comparison to a 12 hour cramped bus ride ($9usd), I managed to scrape together 2 miserable French women (who insisted on eating a full sit down meal before leaving and stopping ½ way for tea), two Israelis who were awesome, and an American couple from Alaska who I wound up rooming with in Pokhara for a couple of days.
The Van ride was phenomenal, it started off slow and we were stopped by the Maoist Rebals who insisted the driver pay them to pass, which he did. Slowly out of the dirty town and in the distance I saw blue skies and the out line of Mountains! At this point all India had done for me was give me rain and humidity, sure I got some sun here and there but for the most part it was overcast and cloudy. So blue skies was something to smile about. The drive began to climb higher and high and before I knew it the road got bumpy, narrow, and a bit dangerous, the driver was bumping some horrible tunes, but I was all smiles. A awful re-mix of “what is love” (night at the Roxbury song) came on and I started twitching my head like the SNL skit, the Americans sitting behind me laughed at it, but the sour French bags, and the Isralies had no clue what I was doing… oh well.
Anyways the drive was great, my sickness that India had given me was starting to clear and breathing in fresh air felt great. The van climbed for quite some bit, whipping past tiny villages that hung onto the cliff side, kids waving at us as we drove by, stopping for tea actually wasn’t that bad. We pulled over at a small village (no tea for me), and I just walked up and down the road, it was so peaceful with HUGE green hills towering over me and the view of layers upon layers of rice terraces was just off in the distance. As we got back in and continued the drive, more and more rice terraces littered the landscape. I really was in awe in how amazing these structures are, carved into the hill, layer after layer after layer.The drive ended at lake side in Pokhara, Bob, Sara (two Americans), and it got out and found our first cheap hotel. The Marco Pollo.
After a long stay (19 days, which seemed a lot longer), I busted through the boarder into Nepal. My biggest mistake was being cheap and only getting a 15 day visa which you must pay in USD for ($25). The Boarder town on Sunali which is both India and Nepal, is very representative of India, cluttered, dirty, people haggling you to buy just about anything. Needless to say I was NOT interested in staying in Sunali longer than I had to. Unfortunately I just missed the bus to Pokhara so I was forced to sit around for an extra 3 hours. Instead I asked a tour company how much it would be for a private van and seeing it was only $15usd for a 6 hour van ride in comparison to a 12 hour cramped bus ride ($9usd), I managed to scrape together 2 miserable French women (who insisted on eating a full sit down meal before leaving and stopping ½ way for tea), two Israelis who were awesome, and an American couple from Alaska who I wound up rooming with in Pokhara for a couple of days.
The Van ride was phenomenal, it started off slow and we were stopped by the Maoist Rebals who insisted the driver pay them to pass, which he did. Slowly out of the dirty town and in the distance I saw blue skies and the out line of Mountains! At this point all India had done for me was give me rain and humidity, sure I got some sun here and there but for the most part it was overcast and cloudy. So blue skies was something to smile about. The drive began to climb higher and high and before I knew it the road got bumpy, narrow, and a bit dangerous, the driver was bumping some horrible tunes, but I was all smiles. A awful re-mix of “what is love” (night at the Roxbury song) came on and I started twitching my head like the SNL skit, the Americans sitting behind me laughed at it, but the sour French bags, and the Isralies had no clue what I was doing… oh well.
Anyways the drive was great, my sickness that India had given me was starting to clear and breathing in fresh air felt great. The van climbed for quite some bit, whipping past tiny villages that hung onto the cliff side, kids waving at us as we drove by, stopping for tea actually wasn’t that bad. We pulled over at a small village (no tea for me), and I just walked up and down the road, it was so peaceful with HUGE green hills towering over me and the view of layers upon layers of rice terraces was just off in the distance. As we got back in and continued the drive, more and more rice terraces littered the landscape. I really was in awe in how amazing these structures are, carved into the hill, layer after layer after layer.The drive ended at lake side in Pokhara, Bob, Sara (two Americans), and it got out and found our first cheap hotel. The Marco Pollo.
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