From Pokhara to Shimla

Before I reached Shimla, the starting point of my cycling trip through the Himalaya this year, I had to challenge a 48hours bus trip all the way from Nepal to India. My empress and my very good friend Tsetan brought me to the bus station where the first leg, a 22hours bus nightmare to the border town of Mahendranagr, the most western point in Nepal. During this 22hours there was only one driver (yes one!), and at one point he seemed very tired, while I hoped he knows some ‘keep awake medicines’. After the food break, just ten hours after departure, he became very active, as he drove this vehicle as a wild gone   that winding roads in a pitch dark night.  I think my hopes became true, but here I found myself praying that he will become sober as soon as possible. The bus was not in a better condition than his driver, as it rained outside very strong, it started pouring through the bus ceiling inside. At one point it felt like in a cave, but I took this as a welcome refreshment because of the heat from outside. But it became even worse, as the viper was not working at all, and driver and one conductor ended up pressing their noses into the front window, while the second one was hanging out of the door to give instructions about what is coming ahead. After all suddenly we stopped in the middle of nowhere with an engine problem. The staff discussed a while, and a cooper wire was taken out of an electrical thing, one head and the belonging arms disappeared in the engine room and one minute after we kept going again, thanks to a small cooper wire. A very drunk man also wanted my attention while shouting out loudly into my direction, but after he recognized that I am deaf to his nonsense talk, he started complaining out loudly about the snoring man behind him, what was very annoying because he make more disturbing than that deep sleeping man, but not enough, as he also fell asleep he cut the whole rainforest even louder than that other one, but for sure he did not complain at all now. After we reached Mahendrangar I got familiar with the topatops of Nepali music of the last 50years (quite a few nice among them), and know how many porn movies the man behind me stores on his cellphone (quite a few), he was watching in full volume during the entire trip. I made the last five km to the border very quickly and was very confident to change my last Nepali rupees into Indian one at the changing booth in front of the Immigration, but here I was told that they don’t have Indian bills and I have to go back to town to the bank offices. I went back, begged in three offices the last Indian bills, it seemed that there is a shortage of Indian money over here. Maybe all the other tourists came after me made a long face, but sorry guys, first come first serve. The border crossing was as easy as always (I took this for the third time), only the Indian official was not very happy about my one day overstay on my Nepali visa, which was no problem at all. they even didn’t fined me for that. After he told me in a very strict voice ‘in India not possible’ , I got my passport stamped and here I am back in India, the country of impressions, positive as negative. The further upcoming trip was more straightforward than supposed. I got a direct bus to Haridwar, another 9 hours. I arrived there around 10pm and it was still damned hot as i directly jumped into another bus to Shimla and avoided to stay for one night in that holy Hindu city. To Shimla it took 12 hours more in a rattle trap, but finally i reached Shimla dead tired, went straight to the hotel where i got stacked last year with a Guardia, but it is still the cheapest in that overpriced hill station. For the next two days I recovered from that trip, got prepared for my cycle trip through the Himalaya this year…

bottom line: did I tell that I hate bus trips? As riding the bike I mostly have the control of everything, but taking puplictransport I give my life in the hand of a not trusty looking driver. This thought doesn’t make me feel comfortable. Now any die-hard cyclist would say, why he don’t cycle all this way, well I did this stretch, even some parts already two times in 2008 and 2009, and I can say it is quite boring one…

A travel update

Some time past since the last update, so here it comes in a very short form.

In the last month I stayed most of the time in lovely Pokhara, enjoyed the reunion with my empress TY, went out on regular bike trips, with my friend Tsetan, in the entire Pokhara- Valley and also had to do alot of paperwork.

Since the last year many things changed here in Nepal, but the political situation is as instabil as ever, since the Maoist quit their government in 2009 there is a so called ´puppet cabinet´ on power, which the Maoist don´t accept. So there were rumours about a new peoples war in this beautiful Himalayan country, but instead there came only an almost three week strike in the whole country, to set pressure to the government. During this time all occasional daily life went to stillstand. No buses, cars, nor motorbikes were allowed to ride (even rumours about the ban of bicycles went around), all shops and offices kept closed (shops were only allowed to open between 6 and 8pm, due to do the necessary shoping of daily needs). But many shops simply ignored that to open their business through the back door (but were still feared of got their shops destryed due to the strike patrols). After some time the people get tired about that nonsense of blocking the usual business and many people start to demonstrate against this, which is clearly understanable: Nepal is one of the poorest countrys in the world and they harm their own economy alot, only because a few political leaders do not like each other. The only positive during this time was, that there was more electricity provided than normal. I guessd that this is for kept the people busy with watchin TV instead of going out on the streets, but others said there´s nobody in the power houses to cut the line (Nepal has a power schedule, where are the times noted when line cut), because he´s home an watching TV. Anyway, after pressure from outside the strike was stopped and very fast every went back to normal life, what was quite time. The prices for vegetables increased more than double, piles of fruit rottend next to the street because sales were not allowed, and still many people are starving in this country, what a paradox. This shows more and more the nonsense of this government- game, if they would really care about the people, why they harm them with stupid things like such a weeklong srike. It is everywhere the same with politics, if their paycheck is less, then they speeding ticket, and the next comes… I suppose also that there will be a mass of something like a newborn wave in the beginning with the new year.

But of course I also enjoyed  many bicycle trip with my very good friend Tsetan in and around the Pokhara-Valley. Tsetan is a Tibetan teacher in the SOS- school in the Tibetan-Camp of Tashiling and shares a huge passion about riding the bicycle. So he showed me a plenty of wonderful rides. Great, we went to areas where the ´onerupie, onechocolate, onepen´- Mantra still doesn´t exist (normaly tourist will hear this request for small giveaways all the way, what fastly gets very annoying, but worth to mention that the tourist has created this problem by themself). I was always surprised how simple the life turns just around the corner from the tourist hubs like Pokhara. Realy lovely, thank you Tsetan for aplenty of wonderful rides, and for sure many more will come…

Currently I am in Shimla/ India, recover from a 48hours bus trip. The starting point of my Himalayan bike trip this year, but this will be another story…

Here a few random pics from the last few month: