Yuksom-Jorethang-Kakarbhitta-Kathmandu

So we decided to try our luck and see if we could make it to Nepal, and we did! It all was fairly easy, If you consider: two, five hour jeep rides, one 18 hr bus ride, and one twenty minute taxi ride easy....

We woke up in Yksom at our really cozy hotel at 4:30am in hopes to catch a jeep to Jorethang that was supposed to leave some time between 5:30 and 6:30 am. So, we packed up all of our stuff and hurriedly made our way down the hall to find that we were locked in our hotel. We waited patiently for a few minutes, thinking someone would be back to man the front desk soon, but no luck. After about 20 minutes or so we started getting really impatient and started being a little bit louder (knocking on doors, ringing buzzers, etc) fearing we would miss our jeep. Still no one came. After about 45 minutes, and a ot of talking loudly and wandering the halls trying to find someone to open up, a little girl came downstairs with a key and let us out. We made it to where the jeeps meet in the morning and there was no jeep to Jorethang. So after waiting a little more finally a jeep pulled up and we were on a long, bumpy, twisty road to Jorethang.

Jorethang isn't much of a town but more of a transit point in western Sikkim. Kind of grey and dull, and of course smelling like urine. We wandered around a bit and finally got pointed in the right direction to get a jeep to the Kakarbhitta, the border of Nepal. After a lot more waiting finally we got into a jeep that was crammed packed with people. Teresa had a really nice Indian gentleman basically sitting on her lap and I was squishing a poor little Nepali guy. After a few hrs of driving we made it to the border of Sikkim, where we had to have our permit inspected and stamped before we could continue on to the rest of India. Then we drove a few more hours, Hindi music blaring the whole time, till we finally made it to Siliguri and then to Kakarbhitta.

Being back down in the main land of India was kind of like being hit by a ton of bricks. Touts, beggars, rickshaws, trucks, people everywhere again. It was much different then the laid back and somewhat shy people of the hills.

So after all the necessary paper work on the Indian side of the boarder we walked across the bridge into Nepal. The boarder seemed to still be closed to any large courier trucks as they were backed up for miles on both sides of the border and over the bridge. It felt sort of liked being a refugee walking along side all of those stopped vehicles with a bunch of other people carrying luggage or riding on cycle rickshaws. I guess since the border had been closed for a while everyone was trying get across at once.

Once we had gotten our Nepali Visa's and went through a hassle trying to get our money changed and trying to buy onward tickets to Kathmandu we got something to eat. I was getting pretty fed up with all of the people trying to rip us off and begging when they were clearly dressed very well and eating some sort snack or talking on a cell phone just a few minutes before. Also, everything here is written in Nepali and not much English is spoken at all. Making buying our bus tickets one of the most difficult tasks yet, aside from the Old Delhi Rail station.

So after wandering around for an hr or so trying to figure out which bus was ours, as again they were all labeled in Nepali, a guy came and showed us to our bus and our seats. Of course he wanted a tip but this time I didn't mind giving him money as I don't know how else we would have found our bus.

We settled into our seats with Nepali music blaring, incense burning, colorful lights everywhere. We were zipping down the road to Kathmandu. Despite being fairly cramped in the tiny seats of the bus I managed to sleep off and on for most of the night. The bus stopped regularly to cram more people on or let some off and also at probably half a dozen police check points. Apparently sometime during the night a man came and sat directly in front of us and was staring at Teresa and I for over and hr and laying his arm on our bags.

Some guys can be really creepy here and I don't think it's a dangerous thing but more of a difference in culture. In India especially there really isn't any "personal bubble space" and people just grab books from you without asking or blatantly stare at you for a long duration of time. This all can get pretty annoying and I've had to keep myself from losing my temper more then a few times.

Anyways, we finally made it into Kathmandu and everything here feels very normal. There are TONS of tourists here and no real sign of any political uprising's anywhere. Kathmandu isn't really how I had expected it to be, at least not the Thamel district where we are staying. There are way more tourists then anywhere we had been previously and a lot of the places take advantage of this by charging way to much. Although there are a few climbers around and a lot of shops that I think we may be spending a bit of money at here in a few minutes.

I think we are going to just hang out in Kathmandu and do a few day trips from here for a bit while we try and figure out the logistics of doing a trek. There are also a few rafting companies in town so maybe I can convince Teresa to go on a few day rafting trip as well. That's all for now but since there are so many Internet places in town hopefully we can find one fast enough to upload some photo's soon!