The Trip

Arriving in Chitwan National Park after the rafting and the bus journeys seemed like a paradise. The Park itself is very large but the accommodation is just outside of the park proper, being part of the small town of Chitwan. The town was nice and small and very quiet. Elephants being ridden mix with the motorcycles and the small "baby" Rhino that walks the town, making for some interesting pictures. Being a plum I managed to leave my camera indoors for the most part so you'll just have to take my word for it. The hotel was okay, though there was no hot water, but getting clean under the lukewarm shower and then falling unconscious into bed was the best part. We arrived at the hotel at 0700 that morning so by 0900 I was asleep. I awoke at about 1400 to hear that Matt, Matt, Gabriel, and Kate (the people who I had been rafting with and had come to Chitwan too) had not slept and had gone down to a small part of the river bank next to the town to see the elephants gett...

I had never been white water rafting before. In fact I have never really spent much time on the water. So perhaps going headlong into a 10 day rafting expedition on a river with some scary rapids on it was not the best tonic for me. But I went and did it anyway. The river in question is the Karnali in the West of Nepal. It is quite isolated and it took a 24 hour bus ride from hell to get there, plus a night in a hotel with similar specifications to a solitary confinement chamber. The bus journey took us across many mountains and valleys in Nepal but to be fair the scenery was good. On the days of travel though the bus was hot and the air dusty so I was rapidly losing the will to live. There is simpy not enough room for someone with legs this long on one of those buses. Every bump meant I knocked my kneecap on the seat in front and as the seats did not recline, getting comfortable was impossible. This went on for about 24 (count them) hours. We finally arrived at some backwater ...

Pokhara is Nepal's second city, nestling in the Kathmandu valley. I took a bus from Kathmandu and the scenery along the way was lovely, all green and leafy and sunny. Even the air was clean, though ater getting of the bus and wiping my face I discovered that the air was mainly diesel smoke but the buses here are not really tuned that well. I had met up with someone on the trip through Tibet who was doing volunteer work in the town and had heard much about it so my expectations were high. The main town itself is a busy Nepali town with the usual shops and Internet Cafes, though if you go a few kilometres down the road towards the big lake you get to Lakeside; a very peaceful and almost rural part of the outskirts. It is here where I stayed for a week. The main change for me was that I was actually able to sleep at night without traffic noise or the crap band in the adjoining hotel making a racket. In Lakeside all you could hear at night were the creepy-crawlies and cicadas maki...

I arrived by express bus in Pokhara today which is a city about 130 miles from Kathmandu, heading West. It seems a nice place though I am staying in one of the quieter areas which suits me. I've got a nice view of the lake and I think the rain is about to start again which should clear the humid and sultry air. The only thing of note at the moment is that the taxi touts here are like Laurel and Hardy - they seem to raise their prices in unison when you ask them the price to somewhere and then deny it was any lower. There's nothing like a bit of healthy competition, especially if it's like Opec. There is a train of ants marching across the desk I am sitting at now. They march in a straight line to the keyboard cable where they crawl up and then march in the same straight line up the cable into the back of the keyboard. I think they're making a nest.

To get to Nepal from Tibet by road it seems that you have to leave one planet and join another. Tibet as I have said before is very arid and dry. Nepal is not. In contrats Nepal is one of the lushest places on earth with a high annual rainfall and a lot of wildlife. The road takes you down from the Tibetan/Chinese border town into Nepal proper. The border crossing itself amused me in the way it typified the attitudes of the respective governments. The Chinese side of the bridge has a naff archway, common in China, emblazoned with the Seal of the People's Republic and manned by severe looking uniformed officers. You have to fill in your SARS form, give your passport twice, and don't smile. Just across the bridge is the border of the Kingdon of Nepal. There's just a broken sign and some taxi touts. I liked it immediately. Even this close to Tibet the air was more himud and there was a lot of vegetation. We were right by the river and stayed the night in a small hote...

Tibet has to be one of the dustiest places on the Earth's surface. It rains here once a year and in between stays sunny and cold. The afternoon winds create massive sand dunes, though the sand is just dust; very fine and powdery like talc. The trip to Nepal over land through Tibet was not as epic as the description sounds, but it took us through some pretty remote places where the only road was an unsurfaced track through the valley. On the way through you could see only the ocassional yak or shepherd and in the middle of the the desert you would find lots of tiny villages full of smiling faces and grubby children. Our jeep in this journey was another old Landcruiser, a blue one this time, named Rose. Our guide was a nice chap called Tashey whose main specialisation was as a trekking guide, so he's used to walking the route we drove. Our driver was as crazy as the last guy. We started from Lhasa and went on the only road out of the city to a dust-bowl in the middle of nowh...