This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
e biked along in the rain following a long
WWVerceson of buses and lorries travelling from Kathmandu to Pokhara. It was great to be out of Kathmandu. It had been pleasant walking round the temples at six in the morning but after that it was one noisy, dirty, polluted hovel. We managed to overtake a truck and found that we had the road to ourselves so we quickly accelerated downhill towards Naubise, our destination for the night.
It took a few seconds to realise what had happened when the hillside around us collapsed. The lush green grass on the bank suddenly blurred and this was followed a second later by a plopping sound vaguely like a big mud bubble in a thermal pool. Muddy brown water flowed over the road carrying clumps of grass over the cliff on the other side as we rode through. Luckily the spokes and wheels on bikes don’t offer much resistance and when we got to the other side we both broke out in nervous laughter. Only an hour out of Kathmandu and already things were getting interesting.
We reached Naubise and carried our panniers up the rickety old stairs to our room in the only hotel in town. From Naubise we planned to follow the road through Daman to Birganj on the Indian border. This used to be the main road from India to Kathmandu but now that a faster route has been built it is hardly used, making it perfect for cycle touring. It was a steady uphill through forest with old style houses and views down into the valleys to make it appealing. School was just starting for the day and we passed a group of children on their way to school. I could hear Matt ranting behind me, something about wanting ta.kill someone” i 1 pedalled a little harder till I was a safe distance ahead.
Matt had never cycle toured before and after just getting over an 18-day bout of giardia, wasn’t enjoying the cycle touring experience as much as I was. I'd told him it was going to be very hot and dusty, a fact he kept repeating to me as the torrential rain poured down just before the mudslide the previous day. At least it was hot today — way too hot in fact. And in an E-mail to Dave in an attempt to persuade him to come along too I’d jokingly said it was all downhill in the Himalayas. Dave hadn’t been fooled by this obvious exaggeration and stayed home but Matt had chosen to believe it and was now very upset to find it inaccurate. We plugged slowly uphill all day to our goal of Daman at 2,700m. We’d started from well under 1,000m so this was possibly a bit much to ask. The views were great but it really was hot and it was with immense joy that we came around a corner to find the local children bathing under a waterfall. The bikes were dropped on the spot as we rushed over to the waterfall and immersed ourselves under it. Words cannot describe the pleasure. Water became the weapon in the fight against the heat. Except in the cool air around Daman, we soaked our shirts in rivers at every opportunity. Down on the plains I! found that there were water pumps situated along the main road that you could use for cooling. Normally you could sit under the pump and manipulate the lever with one arm and when that failed, locals rushed to the rescue and pumped for you. After an hour or so of watery bliss we headed off up the hill again. Matt decided he’d had enough and next time I saw him he was on the back of a truck, waving as he roared past. That night after scouring the village for vegetables, we pitched the tent in a Nepali local’s front yard. Once he’d worked out that we had our own food and weren't too dangerous, he invited us into his Spare. room..TOrthe. we assumed was his wife sat with us and communicated the best they could while we cooked Dahl for dinner. In the course of the conversation it turned out that one of the old ladies, who we’d assumed to be his grandmother, was in fact his wife. “We thought this was your wife,” we said looking at the younger woman who had been sitting with us all evening. “She is my wife also,” he replied. “So night. He and_a young woman ___ you have two wives?” we asked with jaws gaping. The final touch came quickly as he exclaimed with a grin “No, I have three.” Next day we cycled the semi-vertical 13 km to Daman, which is a sleepy little town of a few hundred inhabitants, many of them Tibetans. We had a look round the town and went for a beer with Dan, a Brit who'd had lots more travelling experience than Matt and I put together. After sinking a few beers we were feeling a bit light-headed — it must have been the altitude — and we wandered out into the darkness in search of a restaurant. We spied a cook sitting in front of his fire just over the road and went and sat down beside him. He looked a little startled at first but before long we were all laughing together as we sat round the fire warming ourselves. Soon our thoughts turned to food so we decided to order.
We asked the cook for dahl and after looking bemused for a few seconds he tried to explain to us in his limited English that this was not a restaurant and we were in fact sitting in the family kitchen. Great people the Nepalese; imagine what you would do if a group of stupid tourists suddenly walked into your kitchen and sat themselves down in front of the heater. He offered us food anyway, but after a look at the amount of food in the pot and the number of people it had to feed, we headed back out into the rain.
After thunder and lightning during the night, the next morning was crisp as we headed up to the pass. We had risen early hoping to get a glimpse of Mt Everest through one of the telescopes at the lookout point but the weather prevented that. We stopped at Daman resort for a hot chocolate. This complex was luxury by Nepali standards and we wished we had a few days to kick back and practice our mini golf in the company of rich Indians and cashed up travellers. From the pass it was over 50 km of downhill — no kidding! It’s got to be one of the longest stretches of downhill anywhere in the world. It’s really beautiful too. As we came down through the semi-tropical forest with the mists swirling around us we got glimpses of the Terai 1,000m below. Soon we were out of the cloud riding through lush green villages. Obviously not many tourists come through here. We arrived at one village before Coca-Cola did — a huge accomplishment in the Third World. Locals who wanted to see the big attraction instantly surrounded us. We did the usual “disco-bike and robot-chasing children act” which helped to break the ice. The people here weren't as friendly as they’d been on the other side of the pass. At one stage rocks crashed beside us and we could hear the laughter of children on the road 40m above. They were obviously enjoying their game of “kill the cyclist”. We stayed at Neema Lodge in Hetuda that night. Hetuda is a town of 10,000 people and it has a very laid-back, clean feel to it. We wandered around that night looking for food and ended up eating chow mein. Some guys from Calcutta told us that the chef was internationally renowned for his beef momos so we decided to break our vegetarian diet. And break it we did; four plates of momos later we were still wanting more and had to agree that these Momos really were something special. The chef gave us a little of his homemade wine to taste. It didn’t taste that good and quarter of a cup gave me a wicked headache the next day. Matt tried hitching to the border the next day. He didn’t stand on the side of the road like most normal hitchers; he grabbed on to passing vehicles and let them tow him and his bicycle along. It worked fine at first but after two big wipeouts, he finally saw reason and decided to give it up. The Nepalese openness and generosity was shown again on our final day in Nepal. While I was waiting in the heat for Matt to catch up two locals invited me into their business and shouted me soft drink. Everywhere we went people would smile, give us a big “namaste” and cheerfully answer any questions we had. The Nepalese really know how to make you feel welcome. Matt finally turned up — it seems he’d been swimming in a pond. Hmm, I saw a stagnant waterhole used for bathing water buffalo a little way back; was this what he was talking about? I decided not to pursue it. That afternoon we finally found the Indian border post. The problem was that it had no marking so there was nothing to distinguish it from the hundred other dirty rough buildings around it — except for the fact that one wall had been knocked out and there was rubble all over the floor. We woke one of the officers and had our papers processed. “Welcome to India”.
[Photo captions and page text that interrupted the story:]
Daniel Moore
Trip Reports