Kathmandu

Making new friends in Katmandu

I stayed in Kathmandu for a week in the end, mainly because I was waiting on my visa for Pakistan. I hung out with Nick, the Frenchman for a bit and it was good to have someone to go out and eat with for a few days. He was making a video documentary in Kathmandu about the street children and some of the footage I saw looked really professional so I hope it comes out well. Every morning while I was staying in Kathmandu, I got woken up by the large group of Japanese who congregated outside in the yard and began doing speeches which ended in regular applause. Not what you want at 6am I can tell you. Nick doesn't really like the Japanese. He told me a funny joke they have in France: A Japanese guy comes back from his holidays and his friend asks him 'so how was your holiday'. He replies ' I don't know, I haven't developed the pictures yet'.

The day before I planned to leave Kathmandu and see the something else of Nepal, I found out that the petrol situation hadn't got any better. While i was working on my bike, a guy at my hotel was going for petrol and said he'd keep a space in the queue for me. When I got there, the were literally hundreds of bikes and cars all over the place but somehow I was ushered into the front near the pumps. The little garage was expecting a delivery that afternoon and word had obviously got out. While waiting for the delivery, I was just chatting to some of the local guys who were very interested in my bike, especially my plastic fuel tank which they have an unbridled desire to tap all the time and while grinning say 'plastic?'. After a couple of hours, a dirty fuel tanker pulled up on the street, its horns blaring and the place went nuts. I couldn't fathom how they were going to get near the tanks to fill them up with all the traffic. Somehow, through the chaos of people and vehicles, enough people shouted seemingly random instructions and amazingly, a bit of space was cleared for the tanker. Once the tanks were filled and the tanker moved off without running anybody over, the pushing and shoving started but somehow I got served after about 20 minutes. I even got a full tank which was impressive given the locals were restricted to 5L each. After this episode, I decided to head to India as I couldn't face doing this every time I need to fill up which is normally every day

"Just popping out for some petrol, I'll be back some time tomorrow"

I needed to get a Letter of No Objection from the UK embassy to go with my application which cost me 4,930Rs for a 4 line letter- the bastards! I eventually got my Pakistan visa, though despite telling me to come back on Thursday morning, they told me to come back again the next day. Grrrr- As I'd already packed up and left my hotel at this point, I managed to convince them to give me it later that day. So to fill in 3 hours, I went to Pashupatinath which is a holy Hindu site. I watched to cremations being carried out by the river which was pretty fascinating. The body is laid out on a wooden base on a stone plinth by the river. The priest is the guy who does all the preparing while the male members of the family gather. No female family members are allowed as being the delicate things they are, history has it that when a woman's husband died, the wife tended to throw herself on the funeral pyre given that her life was no longer worth living, hence 'no women allowed'. The eldest son also has to shave his head and face beforehand, then the fire is started using embers which continually burn as no matches or lighters are allowed. It takes a few hours for the body to pretty much disappear though certain bones may remain i.e. breast bones of males and pelvises of women. Once it has been mostly reduced to ash the whole lot is rather unceremoniously brushed off into the river. This place was actually the site of the cremations for the murdered members of the Royal Family a few years back.

And in to the river with the ashes

After getting my visa, I rode over to the east of the city to Bhaktapur , an old town but they wanted 750Rs for tourists so seeing that was half my daily budget, I rode on to the hills further east. Unfortunately its the rainy season so there is a lot of cloud cover and I figured that I probably wasn't going to see Everst off in the distance and decided to head for the Indian border to the south. The traffic around Kathmandu is basically bloody awful but at least it started to clear the further away I got. As KTM is in a valley, the road south winds up into the mountains and is pretty slow going as it twists and turns all over the place.


I met a German cyclist on the road who was fun to talk to and we agree to try and stay at the next village though when I get there, I'm told there is nothing so unfortunately we don't hook up as I have to keep on going till I find something in Palung, luckily just before dark. I take a small room with a family though there is a young guy in the room when I'm shown it. When I question the father about whether I'm getting a single room, the son is turfed out. The toilet downstairs is filthy and I try to hold my breath for as long as I can but its never possible and resort to breathing through my t-shirt which frankly doesn't smell much better but at least it doesn't smell like a rank toilet. The guys young daughters are good fun, though practicing their English on me while I eat my dinner. I was up early the following morning and left at 6.40am which is pretty good for me. I mainly didn't want to stay and use the toilet again though. The road started descending from about 2,500, though there was lots of rain and cloud so I coudn't enjoy the views for most of it. From Palung, it took around 4 hours to reach the Indian border and thats when the fun really began...