Day 104_to_109

Lasts days had been hard on the road, so we need to rest a bit. As the hotel is nice and we are not in a hurry we decide to stay at least one more day here. Finally, it will be two days because something from the restaurant (a cheese sandwich!) felt wrong in our bellies.

Finally arrives the day to enter to Nepal! the day!!! We are ready!

The way to Bhimdatta is slow, but a bit less stress-full than the other roads from the lasts days.

After few hours, we reach the strangest border we’ve crossed… It’s a dam on a river!!!

People is just crossing walking, on horse, on bike… and nobody is asking papers!!!!

However we have our papers done!

After a quick paperwork to enter to Nepal we are in Bhimdatta, finally somewhere not noisy!

Sorry, but I have to say it… What a relieve not being in India anymore!!!!! The roads here are a bit better and NOT CROWDED. For the first time in a long time we really enjoy the riding day.

We are falling in love while crossing little villages and the jungle.

The houses are modest. The peolple is living near the jungle between rice fields.

Children at school:

Please… don’t hunt us!

We arrive to Kohalpur, and here we have to decide if we stay in one of the hotels that we see or we continue a bit more. As we haven’t done all the km that we wanted, so we decide to ride to the next city. Maps me “says” we’ll fins there and on the way at least 3 hotels.

Kohalpur:

We reach Khaskusma without seeing any hotel on the way. We ask around and anybody knows one here… Finally we see a hotel sign in a restaurant. I go to ask about it and I end up walking 10 minutes through the jungle with a young boy. When we arrive to the “hotel” I’m shocked. It’s a clay house with straw roof, but the walls don’t end on the roof!!! It’s open!! there is no electricity, no toilet, no water, and a fat rat jumps above my head in the room. Hmmmmm tempting, but no thanks, rats on the room are my limit.

We have to continue riding to the next village, and pray to find there a proper hotel (at least a fully closed room without rats). We have two concerns, we are low in fuel and the dark is coming fast, so we start riding again to Lamahi.

We try to refuel on the way, but all the gas station are closed, we can’t reach the next village with the fuel we have! At some point a guy says he knows where we can find some gas, and he guides us with his motorbike to a little shop. There, a girl sells us 2l of gas in a bottle of water. More than nothing!

As we’ve lost a lot of time searching for fuel, the night catches us on the road. Here, comes de 3rd problem. The light is not working!!! we have to use the dipper light and everyone is complaining about it. I’m quite sure that nobody will recommend to ride through a jungle during the night on a motorbike. I have to say that it is quite disturbing because we are quite slow and you feel as “someone” could jump upon you at any moment! We feel like meals on wheels! We spend around two hours riding in complete dark, almost alone. When we see some lights we stop to ask for the village. It’s a military post and they get really nervous when they see us, they start screaming WHO ARE YOU??? WHAT DO YOU WANT?? WHO ARE YOU??? We shout TOURIST! TOURIST! HOTEL???? Then, they calm down and they say Lamahin is nearby. What a relieve!!!

Finally, we reach Lamahi with the fuel warning light on… We just have fuel to ride 2 or 3 km more! That was tight! Now another odyssey begins. Here, there are lots of hotels, but they are creepy as hell. The rooms are dirty, they don’t have toilet, no hot water, etc. We ask for the best hotel in town and we go there. This room is habitable, so we take it! What a relieve we can rest! And then, a woman comes laughing and saying no… The hotel is fully booked. At this point I want to cry. WHY??????

We end up in a creepy hotel, but at least it has air conditioning… And a 25 cm lizard (from now on named Ermenegildo), at least one cricket (Pepito), and a bunch of mosquitoes and other bugs.

Next day we wake up early in the morning, we just want to be out of here as fast as possible. First thing we have to do is to find gas. We decide to fill one of the canisters to carry 5l extra.

We have another amazing riding day! We missed that so much!

Just a minute after taking this photos, we almost lost my boxcase! we jump a little in a pothole and it flies away! Luckily we had any motorbike behind us. We spend almost one hour trying to fix it… great! now we need ropes to carry both boxes!

We arrive almost at night at the resort situated near Barathpur. It’s an amazing place in the middle of the jungle. As the last km is off-road and my butt is hurting I decide to walk. What an experience! I’m meeting with the inhabitants who greet me with big smiles and “Namaste” while I see the sunset upon the rice fields… I’m in love with this land!

Once at the hotel, we go to visit the river and we have a surprise… the hotel owns a elephant and we find him drinking on the river.

Then, a bigger surprise is awaiting us… We see a rhino having a bath!!!!!!! a WILD RHINO just in front of us!!! Sorry for the image… it’s quite bad! But we were totally focused on looking at it and it was a bit far.

We start riding through the rice fields early next morning. Today we’ll reach Kathmandu and we’ll meet with Eloy and Lucy there; we’ve rented a house and we’ll stay some days together there.

The riding is nice, the temperature is not too high and the views are beautiful. We keep crossing villages and wonderful forests, but we can feel that we are approaching the capital. Here, we find more and more trucks and cars.

At some point we get stuck in a jam. We ask how long it is to the people on the other way and we are terrified with the answer… UNTIL KATHMANDU (we are 40 km away).

We will spend the next 4 hours riding between giant (for us) trucks, cars and crazy motorbikes on a road in very bad condition with potholes, sand and gravel. It is quite dangerous and stressful, we are nearly hit by slow trucks driving too near so many times… It’s awful.

At some point the road is really really bad, so I have to hop off the motorbike and walk. Next I’m not sure what happens. I see Tià passing me on the other lane. I keep walking waiting to see him at some point in front of me. I have to walk on the edge of a deep cliff; at one side I have the cliff and in the other side I have the slow moving trucks (I get slightly hit 2 times). At some point I’m so overwhelmed that I can’t continue, that’s really dangerous. A man (he is also walking) sees me, and helps me reach a wider area with some shops. Then, I’m really scared… Tià is not there. I really thought he’ll be there waiting for me. I don’t even know how much have I walked. Then, I see someone is calling me on the phone. It’s Tià asking where am I. His voice sounds really worried. I say that I don’t know where am I that I can just see two little stands…

Finally he arrives, he is shaking. I’ve walked a long way and he was waiting for me just few meters after the bad part of the road. All this time he was waiting for me there, so he thought something happened to me. He was desperate and even stopped the military to make them search me… Now we are together again and we have to recover from this awful feeling before continuing our way. And it’s not an easy one.

Now we have another problem, the sunset starts. Remember… our light is not working yet. I can’t even describe how the next two hours are, a nightmare in real life. Just imagine that you are in the middle of a thick dust cloud (we can barely breathe, and for sure we can’t see), tired as hell, overwhelmed, riding off-road (no tarmac at all), at night, in a jam surrounded by trucks and other aggressive motorbikes who don’t care about you. I’m just thinking in leaving the motorbike here and taking a taxi. It’s just too much for me. However, we are already in Kathmandu, “just” 5 km away from the house, so Tià pushes to try to reach there and then we can rest.

It seems impossible, but at some point the jam disappears, just 2.7 km more to ride. It seems a cruel joke because now we are near, relieved, and there is less traffic but… The road is a disaster. A difficult off-road, dark and uphill way is waiting for us. At some point we discover the sewer network is open. Tià sees a “pothole” and as he doesn’t see it clear he avoids it, but we have to stop on the side because a truck is coming. Then, we see it, it is a FU…. HOLE around 2m deep!!!!! We are done, we just want to hop off of the motorbike.

Then, some known voice says HELLOOOOO! it’s Eloy. He has been waiting for us around 2 hours on the street. He was worried seeing it was already night. He knew what was awaiting us (they did the same way yesterday). Now it’s all gone, We did it! The nightmare is over! Wowww, this was a hard day, even harder than the desert in Uzbekistan (and that was hard as hell after the accident!!). Now we are home with friends and we can rest. Eloy and Lucy make our recovering from the shock easier with the best dinner ever!!! Tortilla de patatas and jamón!!!!