I made it, and live is great.
Right after the last update I boarded the train to Gorakhpur, closer to the Nepali boarder. It was worse than I expected, and I spent most of the night standing and sitting in a dense crowd of people next to the door. Even though I can't imagine how I managed, I did sleep for some time. It was somewhat funny as I met two students who were squeezed in next to me, and we all tried to find some position in which we could sleep. After my arrival in the very early morning I walked through the whole town trying to change some money. An annoying odyssey, but the last one. I finally hitched a bus to Sunauli, at the Nepali boarder.
Of course this is totally subjective, but since I crossed the boarder everything is better. After I had some experiences with the Indian bureaucracy I expected the worst for Nepal. However, getting the visa took just about 15 minutes.
Feeling quite tired after two consecutive nights in the train, I headed for Lumbini, just 1.5 hours from the boarder, to stay there for the night.
At the boarder I met Jan, a French backpacker, with whom I've been traveling until now.
In Lumbini we visited the birthplace of the Buddha and several monasteries. Further we traveled to Tansen (=Palpa), and headed for a two day trek to Ranighat, from which we just returned. Tomorrow morning we'll set of to Pokhara from where I want to go on the one-week Anapurna Base-camp Trek.
Just look at a few pictures:
Prayer Flags in at the Buddha's birthplace
A statue of the former mentioned
The roof top is the best place to ride a bus
The mighty Himalaya from the distance. It's just amazing to see these mountains
Shaving in a river in Ranighat.
I love Nepal since the minute I crossed the boarder. It is less packed and busy than India. The people are very friendly and the landscape is beautiful (and there are smooth vibrations).
1 comments:
Hi Malte,
glad everything is better now! The picture with you riding on top of the bus definitely need to go to your OKCupid profile, if you still remember to create one.
So what ever happened to your flight? If it got canceled, I would have guessed that you could take the next flight, and I really can't imagine that you were late to the airport after we separated in Mumbai. Anyway I can see now why you wanted to leave India one week before the visa ran out.
Urs
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