Day 41 Zhangmu to Kathmandu

Day 41                        Wednesday 5 October 2011               Zhangmu to Kathmandu

The four of us waited at the hotel for the rest of the group to come through. They had been to Everest Base Camp & had stayed the night at Tingri.

Finally they arrived & we all headed for the Nepal border which was 7 kms away.

Into China customs and yet another search of our luggage. Interest was shown in our Tibetan guide book. The young officer motioned that he was going to confiscate it & opened the drawer of his desk which was full of the same book. Phil ripped out the preface of the book (which mentioned the Dalai Lama) & put it back in his bag. The officer was stunned but made no move to stop us moving on.

With passports stamped we were now out of China & everyone breathed a sigh of relief as it was pretty hard going.

We walked the short distance to the Immigration office of Nepal & what a contrast. We were actually greeted & made welcome. We were through in no time.

Next we had to get some sort of transport to Kathmandu. We were lucky to get on to a 12 seater mini-bus with 9 Chinese tourists (250 yuan). It was festival time so taxis were scarce & prices accordingly high. Quoted $150 to 110 to 90 by taxi

The ride was a bumpy one, again the roads were poor & washed away in places.

As we drove through the villages it was interesting to see the preparations for the Doshain festival. People were washing themselves & their clothes in the streams, decorations were all about & lots of activity. All the transport trucks were idle but gaily decorated with ribbons & flowers.

We later learned that it was a 3 day holiday in Nepal for this festival where all families get together, eat & be merry & exchange gifts. Everyone gets the tikka dot on their foreheads.

We reached our hotel, the Yak & Yeti & after checking in walked downtown to see what transport we could get to Calcutta. We quickly found out that flights were fully booked to Calcutta & buses were not running due to the holidays. We could get to Delhi easily enough. Finally we were on a wait list for Sunday but we were nos 31 & 32 on the list so don’t hold much hope of getting on. We were to return tomorrow after the airline office re-opens to see whether there were more seats available.

Festive dyes

That done, we walked around the old part of town, Thamel, of which we had fond memories from 20 years ago. We really couldn’t recognise much of this area now as a lot of the old buildings had gone, cars & bikes were speeding through the narrow lanes & it was very congested, no doubt in part to the festival holidays.

Even the cobblestones had been replaced.

By now it was dark & we got ourselves completely lost as the street lighting wasn’t good so we got a taxi back to the hotel.

Lady with pet duck

Met up with Dina, Bernard & Pippa and had a good meal at the well-known Chimney Restaurant at the hotel.

It’s a pity that even the famous Yak & Yeti hotel is a new replacement for the original one.  The traffic now in the old areas is terrible, it is not a relaxing walk, all time traffic and motor bikes rushing through.  Not the Kathmandu of old. And not a pleasant place to explore, still lots of temples and chortens though which are resisting the developers efforts.