Crossing a Border from Nepal to India by Jeep

We enjoy hiring a driver and moving about in a private car. As we're older now, we're putting more of our money into door-to-door transport than in previous years. A private car eliminates complex and optimistic train and bus schedules, dirty waiting rooms, the crush of touts and beggars, all of those things you get in stations. And although on the road, we're limited to one snaking, overcrowded pathway, it's still easy to enjoy the passing landscape. I'm engrossed by the swell of the hills, surprise of mountains and drama of recent landslides, and narrow, rutted bridges that shake with bouncing vehicles.

I admit that touring like this gives you only a succession of images. You don't understand much of a culture just because you see rural people at work. As a passing voyeur, you're privy to a storyline that's much the same between under-developed countries: people assembling wares for market, or bent over mats of grain separating out pieces of chaff, or packing cow dung with straw and wrapping the mixture around three-foot sticks that will serve, cleverly, as easy-to-handle cooking fuel. I might as well be watchingtelevision without the voice-over. Framed by my window, it's hardly different than a twenty-inch screen.

I'm deep in such thoughts as we near the Nepal-India border. I've got a second wind now after a drug-induced sleep in the jeep. Earlier that morning, I'd thrown out my back yet again, this time worse than before. This is the earthquake which a few days ago had hit me like mere tremors. It happened in the hotel room, just before leaving. When I reached back for the toilet paper -which is all too often badly situated in these budget hotels - I felt that familiar and unwelcome pain. In order to avoid a full out seizure of the muscle, I hit the floor immediately to perform some breathing and stretching exercises.

We planned to leave at dawn in order to get to the border before the worst of the truck traffic. With no place to get breakfast so early (an acceptable breakfast that is), I took two extra-strength muscle relaxants on an empty stomach. By the time we were into the countryside, I was seeing pink piglets in the fields, wearing pink saris, marching into a pink spaceship.

Then it started to rain. Hard sheets of rain. The spaceship disappeared into mist, as I did myself.

The Border

 

Border crossings are always challenging, confusing, humiliating, or all of the above. It's never easy and Dan and I needed to have our wits about us to figure out how to manage this one into India. My back was sufficiently numb now after the pills, and provided I didn't sneeze or laugh, and stood or sat absolutely erect, I was ready for the crossing.

Our driver, Berinda and his companion Suriyanna (his fiancée had joined him for the trip with our permission) were very helpful. In fact, we had the power of a high-priced tour agency in our jeep. Berinda knew, for example, exactly where we would find all the jeeps waiting for people wanting to go to Kalimpong versus jeeps for other destinations. You could either pay 150 rupees per person (about $7 for Dan and I) for a shared jeep - meaning three or four people corkscrewed into the back seat and three in front - or you could pay 2200 rupees (about $48) for a private jeep. It would take about three hours from the border to Kalimpong. Curiously, all of these India-destination jeeps were lined up on the Nepal side of the border, counter-intuitive for me as I had expected to have to source our jeep once in India.

Dan chose the vehicle (his criteria is functioning seat-belts) and then Suriyanna used her cell phone to call our hotel in Kalimpong to get the owner to give direction to our driver in Hindi. As another precaution, Berinda took the license number of our Indian jeep and gave it to the hotel with notice that he would telephone again in about three hours to check that we had arrived safely.

We parted from our friends promising to keep in touch and wishing them happiness in their forthcoming marriage and emi

***

We're off to India. But not yet. After about 100 meters, we stop. Our driver, who doesn't speak English, motions with a wave of his hand for us to go into an office at the side of the road.

It's raining hard. The dreary cement building is cold and appointed like a quarter master's office. This is the Nepalimmigration and our visa is checked to ensure we've not overstayed the time limit and our passport is stamped. We also agree to dump our Nepalese currency with this official in exchange for Indian rupees. He offers an acceptable rate and gives us our new currency out of his pocket. Everyone has a sideline.

Then again, we're off for India. But not yet. Another 100 meters we stop again. The driver points to Indiacustoms and pulls over to park on the curb.

At the end of a gloomy, muddy path, we enter a one-room wooden shack. An official in army fatigues offers us two grimy seats opposite his desk, and pushes over two forms each (they seek identical information) and waits for us to complete our paperwork. He's rolling back on the legs of his chair, his eyes follow the strokes of our pen.

The room is dark. A single light bulb dangles on a thread from the wooden ceiling, either it's burned out or turned off. A pig waddles in crab grass outside the window. He's not smiling but he's not snarling either, the official that is, not the pig.

Twenty minutes later, our visa is in order, our destination is acceptable. We're dismissed.

Dan can't leave without trying to lighten things up. "Welcome to India. Oh, sorry. You're already here."

Something like a smile, or perhaps it's just a muscle twitch, crosses his face.

It's taken ten years of cajoling and scheming and throwing literature at Dan to convince him to come to India. Not that I'd been to India myself, but it's always seemed to me that I have too narrow a perspective on asia. And since both Dan and I have proven we're able to get sick in a wide variety of countries, developing and under developed, we can't exclude India any longer for health reasons. So we're finally in. It's still raining. We're choking in the exhaust of idling trucks. I take another pill for the road and hope for the best.

Driving to India from Nepal

Our visas are expiring. It's time to leave Nepal. So we we're driving to India.

Drive? Why?

Because for one thing, we never like back-tracking. If we flew from Kathmandu to Calcutta, in order to be reasonably close to where we want to go in India's northeast, we would end up going south just to connect domestically to fly back north. Secondly, I've read some nasty things about the Calcutta airport and I want to spend time there as much as I want to sunbathe in the tar sands.

Most of all, however, my strategy has always been to ease Dan into India by avoiding the big cities, at least at first. Dan's been reluctant for many years to go to India. Too much distressed humanity. Too much chaos. Too much heat. But in the end, he's been getting too much encouragement from our friends to ignore India any longer. Our friends are coaching us on how to do India well. But the selling point, admittedly, is that it's inexpensive.

My thinking is that we'll first spend some time in West Bengal's leafy Darjeeling tea estates and from there into Assam's rhino-rich jungles. It's a good idea to seek out green spaces, elephants, birds, and try out a safari, Indian style. We'll deal with the grit and urban chaos later.

So I'm standing at the wall map in our Kathmandu guest house with Ganga, the owner, former guide, and our advisor.

"How long to get to here?"

"Five to seven hours."

"And after that, to here?"

"Five to seven hours."

"Perhaps, we can stop at this protected area. I hear there is good birding there."

"You'll need five to seven hours to get there."

These are not large distances. Our first 200 km will take us a day because the road is so bad through the mountains. After the mountains, we're in the flat, arid part of the country, very much like India, which runs parallel at that point. Those further 200 km will take another five to seven hours because the road is so bad and busy. Whole chunks of road are regularly washed away in the monsoons. In the rainy season, there will be flash floods careening through the river bed, up and over the banks, water belching out of the Himalaya and surging into India.

But it's dry now, so driving over several sandy, rocky basins is possible, but slow going. We cross what in a different month is the life blood of India, feeders of the Ganges River.

Although driving to India is not most people's first choice, it's a gift that we can even move around the country like this. Until three years ago, Nepal was in the grip of civil strife. The Royal Family had been massacred in 2001 by a deranged Crown Prince, weakening an already tenuous future for Nepal's monarchy. The country disintegrated into factions, armed conflicts ensued. Maoists, notoriously anti-monarchists, disrupted tourism and violent crime increased. Atrocities were committed on all sides. While a peace was struck in 2008, the newly elected Maoist leadership still must bring in a new constitution by the end of November. The Canadian government posts a travel warning on Nepal suggesting that strikes and protests may precede the constitution.

Curiously, we're not seeing any volatility, but perhaps we're just insulated. Instead, weather is on everyone's mind these days. When these mountains get socked in by clouds and haze, tourism stalls. People lose money. Flights are being cancelled around the country because of the weather, not politics.

But back to the exit plan.

I see logic and value in driving out of Nepal. It will take three nights and four days. We'll see something of Nepal that's not about mountains. It will cost us each about $350 including our private jeep transportation, our hotels, meals; by comparison, if we flew to Calcutta and connected to another domestic flight, we might pay almost as must after incidental fees.

Over and above those costs, we're paying $300 for birding at Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve. This co-operative tent camp is installed within an important sanctuary where ornithological research is done. We will be provided with an expert guide for a three-hour jeep run through the jungle and guided walk at dawn. This is the kind of enterprise we've known in Costa Rica. It's important that Nepal be part of the international work being done in tracking bird DNA and banding. And a group of Italian birders have logged nearly one hundred sightings over two days here.

Yawn.

An enthusiastic birder for 50 years, Dan's in his element. I couldn't care less but I'll tag along. I enjoy walking in nature. And in fact, I'll even source opportunities for Dan.

We have an understanding that for any uncomfortable jungle tripping to see birds, I get one opera. And as it happens, I've just found out from a vacationing sound engineer from Abu Dabi that Dubai has just opened an opera house. And since this visit to Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve has us sleeping in tents, and walking up a lane to outdoor toilets during the night, and that there's cobra in this area, and our camp is surrounded by electrical fence to keep out the wild elephants.... I expect dress circle seats at the opera.

(Note to self: figure out how to include Dubai on our flight plan in 2012).

For two days we do not see one western tourist...nor one western toilet for that matter. But squatting is good for me, especially since I threw out my back the morning we departed from Kathmandu.

Two extra-strength Robaxicet tablets later, and a well-placed lumbar cushion, I sleep a good part of the way though the mountains. At each stop, I stretch and do exercises that I've been taught by my trainer. I know Lynn is shaking her head at this moment and probably thinking that I've not been doing my core-strengthening exercises as much as I should have. She's probably right. But it was bound to happen given the demands of trekking in this country.

While it's fascinating to walk around a Nepalese town that sees few tourists, it's challenging to find dinner in a Nepalese town that sees few tourists. Locals generally don't eat out. The two hotels of Hetauda are noisy, one less filthy than the other, and both have restaurants we cannot stomach. And that's the end of the restaurant options. There are a few stalls selling a kind of deep fried donut. There are some chicken skewers over coal - but meat handling and storage techniques here are fast making me into a vegetarian.

Still there's hope.

The first delightful thing we discover about Hetauda is that it's not just another crumbling, dusty, gritty mess of commerce with grey buildings, and grey air that you can chew and wear at the same time. It's main street is lined end to end with hundreds of large, leafy trees. The sun shines on a town that's green. The road becomes an avenue.

And the sun shines on us when Vider approaches. A young man in jeans and a nicely pressed shirt introduces himself and offers assistance to help us find a restaurant.

My senses are alert to touts. Likely, his uncle owns a restaurant.

"My uncle owns a restaurant, just down the road there. I will show you."

Dan and I exchange knowing glances but start enjoying Viber's company nevertheless as we follow him to his uncle's restaurant. The restaurant is decent enough and we order our safe egg-fried rice.

Viber is a journalism student and minors in English.

"Do you know that the ABC of journalism is: Accuracy, Balance, and Credibility."

Now I'm feeling uncomfortable. I've already flunked out of trekking in Nepal (another story). I expect I'd also fail the ABCs of journalism. I have always lacked credibility in Dan's eyes since we see the same world so differently. And Balance, well it depends on the day. Accuracy is linked to credibility. Maybe journalism is a matter of Faith. Do you believe the world through another person's eyes? But I don't want to confuse our young idealist by introducing the "F" acronym.

Our beer is served. Viber continues, looking for that spark of conversation that will turn strangers into friends.

"Do you know the meaning of life?

Dan quickly responds. "Forty-two."

Viber is puzzled but he's not the only one. Who would guess we'd run into a philosopher in Hetauda.

Dan tries to summarize the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (a novel in which it's revealed that the meaning of life is a meaningless "forty-two").

Viber grows thoughtful. "Maybe you're right and no one knows the meaning of life and never will."

Dan sees a potential convert to his godless belief system (I regularly remind him he's going to hell after he dies) and continues:

"You see that guy pushing the cart stacked with bags of rice? Does he ask himself the meaning of life? He's probably just focused on making enough money to feed his family."

Viber nods his head. Dan continues.

"And since he doesn't ask questions about the meaning of life, do you think he's a happy man or an unhappy man." Dan is trying hard for dialectic discourse.

"He is a happy man."

"How do you know?"

"He's my father's cousin. He smiles a lot."

Viber adds: "I know what you mean. I think that most of these people here are in the cave. Plato says they will never see the light. But I want to change that. I know that Nepal can be a beautiful place."

"I think so too, Viber. Just look at the trees in Hetauda and how they give beauty to the town. They stand out, like the pink and red saris that women wear. There are flashes of colour in the dust. And look at your future. You're young and educated and going to make a difference."

"Yes, I will do that. I'm a Maoist."