12-22 Hang out around Kathmandu. Get poste restante package from mom at the post office. Goodbye to Nepal dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in KTM. Lots of their tasty masala tea.
12/23 Decided to not take the long 20 hour bus to the border b/c of safety concerns with Nepalese night busses and breaking up the trip into several days would have meant traveling on Christmas Eve which wasn’t very desirable. On the plane they handed out newspapers and I read about a bus crash that had 20 people seriously injured near the town I would be flying into. So, took the noon flight to Bhadrapur at the very eastern side of Nepal after saying goodbye to Khem and the gang at Elbrus Home Hostel where I had stayed quite a lot. Flew Buddha airlines, which on its advertisement for comfort of its planes, boasted of 5’7” standing room, anti-collision radar, and bullet proof windows…hmmm…among other things. Thank God for those bullet proof windows! It was a tiny plane with about 14 seats and appeared to be from the 1960’s. Cotton was provided for the ears to keep the noise down. The flight was amazing though! Paralleled whole Himalaya range on a gorgeously clear day (you could even see the snow peaks from KTM). We flew by Everest, Makalu, Lhotse, Nuptse…all those big peaks I had trekked by. I also think I could see Mera Peak (the peak that I climbed). As we got further east, I also saw the massive Kanchenjunga (3rd highest peak in the world). When we landed in warm (it is only at 300ft altitude) Bhadrapur, we found out that that the local bus association who were members of the Maoists were on strike amid the increasing political confusion in Nepal. So I shared a minvan taxi with some Indians until we got 8km from the border. Then we found out the road was closed, so I had to take a Rickshaw (human powered tricycle type thing) the rest of the way to Karkabhitta. The poor guy was going so slow with me, my luggage and the other Indian guy and his luggage on the rickshaw. Since I enjoy bicycling, I offered to pedal. The driver was so happy for that and we got lots of looks and noises from people on the street as I flew by. I’m quite a bit bigger than these rickshaw drivers, so I was able to go much faster and we were passing everyone. But…apparently Rickshaws aren’t made to go so fast and something on the left axle broke causing that side of the rickshaw to tilt terribly to the left. At the speed we were going I couldn’t control this heavy left turning and we flew off the road and shot off a bank of about 10 feet. We didn’t fall the whole 10 feet as it was slightly sloped, but we did soon flip over. I imagine, with all our bags and us, it looked a lot like those crashes you see in movies where they are driving the very old convertible and the it goes over the edge and the suitcases fly everywhere and clothes fly out of the suitcases and it’s just a big mess. Though usually in the movies it is quite embarrassing for the guy in the car, but they have swerved to avoid some beautiful woman that they end up falling for. For me, there was no beautiful woman...just a bunch of trash and bushes in the ditch. No one got really hurt, though I was quite scratched up and bloody from cuts. This was not really how I wanted to cross into notoriously dirty disease ridden India…bleeding from open wounds. Before crossing the border, you can hire a taxi to take you to the main Indian city nearby that is about 1 hour away. B/c of the Nepalese strike, they thought I would fall for the lie that they were also striking in India. I just knew this was a scam, so I walked across the border (a long bridge) on my own and easily found a bus to Siliguri. By the time I got to Siliguri is was about 6pm and dark. I was told there was no more busses to Darjeeling b/c of the time. However, one thing I have learned in Asia is that you never really accept no. So I looked around and sure enough found a shared jeep thing going. We packed 12 people into the jeep and then headed up the steep winding road to Darjeeling. Siliguri is at 300 ft and Darjeeling at nearly 7000ft, so you can imagine what the 3 hr drive was like especially if you consider it takes about 2 hrs to go the same altitude gain from Denver to the tunnel and that is going 65 mph the whole time and not 20mph. So yea…really, really steep. As we approached cold Darjeeling I noticed a few houses with Christmas lights. This made me smile and was quite happy I was coming to Darjeeling for Christmas as I was feeling a bit homesick during this Christmas season, so I was grateful to be going to a place where there would be a bit of a Christmas celebration.
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