After 45 minutes on a possessed pickup rollercoaster the driver comes to an abrupt stop and tells us all to get out. “What’s going on?”  “This is it; this is the border.”  “Border, what border, this is village in the middle of nowhere”.  “Just keep walking that way.  You’ll see a bridge– cross it, that’s Nepal”. 

*blink*

So we did… we walked past a mess of bicycle rickshaws at dusk, onto a bridge, and voila– Nepal.

We stayed overnight in the town of Kakarbitta (it’s spelled differently everywhere I look).  Early on the 30th we climbed on a local bus to Kathmandu.   Everything was going fine until we got to the edge of a river and the bus stopped.  That’s it, everybody out.  We were explained that the monsoon had taken out the bridge and the bus couldn’t get to the other side.  We had to  take our bags and cross the river.  How you might ask?  Well by boat– and by boat I mean a bamboo canoe who had to be drained by bucketfulls twice a minute.  Yes, I panicked, but there was no other option, and the river was less than a mile wide, so I’m sure we could swim across, provided we could take our 25 kilo packs off our backs.

We got safely across, where we got a connecting bus (surprisingly, all covered by the same ticket– including the canoe), and continued our journey through Himalayan mountain passes to Kathmandu.  The entire journey took just over 14 hours and was well worth it.

So here we are in Nepal, wondering what the new year will bring.

Happy new year from Kathmandu.  Now onto finding that elephant sanctuary.

p.s. The internet is slow beyond description, and the 10 year old 700mhz computers overloaded with software do not help.  Needless to say, I won’t be uploading pictures until we get back to New Delhi.  Oh– and I lost the computer cable.