The road to Kathmandu (II)
I think I’ve already mentioned that the bus I took to Kathmandu was not the tony, more tourist-oriented “Volvo” bus but a more proletarian Tibetan-style “deluxe” bus. Everyone else was either Tibetan, Indian, or Nepali. The bus stopped every three hours or so for the men on board to hop out and water the nearest trees. More female oriented stops happened every six hours or so. The ride takes approximately 36 hours, starting from afternoon in Dehi. Unlike other trips I’ve taken, the traditional morning tea-and-pee happened at about 3:30 AM, as usual at a dhaba set up in the middle of nowhere. A couple of gentlemen wrapped in shawls casually toted rifles over the shoulders. They didn’t have police or military uniforms. My best guess was that they were either hunters, guards for the dhaba, or dacoits (bandits) on break.
Some hours later, the big daylight morning stop was at this dhaba in the middle of bumfuck India off to one side of the highway. Eastern India, right before the Nepal border, is extremely rural, extremely dusty, and extremely desolate. You can look out the window and be very hard pressed to guess what year–or even what decade–it is. Off to one side of the dhaba, where tea and food were available, was a huge cement block with several water spouts set into it for everyone to wash at. The bathroom was a nice big open field, with room for everyone to pick a spot.
Things changed dramatically at the Nepali border. Or rather, they changed just before the Nepali border. One of the bus crew informed me I needed to get off the bus to deal with my Indian exit visa. With me in this adventure were a mixed race couple who seemed to be the only other bus riders who weren’t Nepali or Indian. Both were dressed Western style–he in dress shirt and jeans, she in black t-shirt and black pants and sporting a facial expression I came to think of as “disaffected Heroin addict”. Before I learned otherwise, I’d assumed the woman, with her pale, peaches-and-cream complexion, black outfit, and sullen expression, was someone’s 14-year-old daughter who’d been dragged to India on some kind of budget educational tour. I kept checking around the bus for her parents. Come to find out that she was not only an adult, but was traveling with her Nepali husband, who, like me, had a relative or two in the States.
Alrighty then. First the Indian exit visa, where once again I put up with the question as to whether the Indian man who was looking over my visa could come back with me to the States. Just to save y’all any suspense, the answer’s always “no”. Next came the surprise: rather than reboard the bus, we were expected to walk into Nepal for the Nepali entry visa, while our luggage rode the same distance.
All of fifty meters, but, still.
Those fifty meters’ worth of walking immediately brought us under an overpainted arch that crossed the street and into a place called Behaliya, which is evidently Nepal’s answer to Tijuana. Outside the office where we picked up our Nepali entry visas were no end of liquor stalls, hotels, kukhri knife sellers, fruit vendors, beggars and touts. One guy just marched right up to us, explaining that everyone from the bus was already at his restaurant, and all we had to do was follow him. Uh-huh. Instead, we stayed where we were, eventually got back on the bus, only to get off after a left turn of about ten yards.
From then on, the bus magically turned into a party bus as the Nepalis on board started seriously drinking and dancing during the ride. The Nepalis were partying hard partly because they could–Nepal, as opposed to India, is not a “dry” country–and also partly because they were celebrating leaving India. Having been there myself, I can understand how most Nepalis might feel about India the way folks from Vegas might feel about New Jersey. It’s more expensive, less festive, and the food just isn’t as good. We rolled into a Nepali dhaba to have “thaklis”–a Nepali style thali plate festooned with a dal soup, curried water buffalo or chicken, a vegetable pickle, and all the rice you can sock away. Throughout all this I’d been hanging out with the other Western couple. The festive atmosphere might have continued from there if the following conversation hadn’t ensued after the husband had an extensive phone call in Nepali with somebody.
“Well,” he chirped, “I finally found you a room…”
“Er…what?” I said. “I have reservations already.”
“It wsn’t easy, the first place didn’t have any spaces…”
“That’s okay,” I insisted. “I already have a room set up.”
“The other place though, has a room for you. I didn’t get a price. If it’s too expensive, you can always move the next morning…”
“Um. But. You’re not understanding. I already have a room, reserved, through a family friend…”
Believe or not, this man kept insisting I stay at his hotel in the unpriced room he’d just set up. I politely and firmly kept refusing. This particular reservation at a Nepali guest house had been set up via the same guy who’d put Joy and Lena up throughout the little revolution Nepal was having back in May, so we knew he was pretty trustworthy. Meantime, I was having to argue a complete stranger out of finding me another room. The disagreement continued, I kid you not, until after 2 in the morning–at which point I actually had to tell the taxi driver to drive me away from him to my guest house. The driver couldn’t find the place for about an hour, but that’s another story.
The main thing to know is months ago, on my first day in India in fact, I’d already gone through the “no record of reservation” scam at the Mumbai airport. This time in Nepal, I stuck with my reservation without thinking about why–until much later that I realized that my new-found friends might have been insisting I put up at their guest house, so they could get a discount on their own room for bringing me in….
