Rough roads but a soft landing

The last leg of our tour of Nepal started off great.  We pedaled east along the Terai region (the southern plains known as Nepal's breadbasket) with little drama other than the dust, the diesel fumes, and the gawking eyes and small crowds that instantly gathered as soon as we dismounted the bikes. It can be a bit of an overwhelming sensation but never did we feel in danger.  After days of camping along the river and even in someone's front yard, we decided to try and find a guesthouse for an evening.  We tried a few spots that just had a slightly sketchy feel until we came across the cutest little guesthouse.  The owners were a Nepali husband and a Philippino wife who both spoke wonderful English and were very excited to have us stay. The place was a treat after many dirty, loud days. It was such a pleasure for us as their young son, Krish, hung around and we talked about our travels as well as talking about the places they had lived. Aida, the wife, cooked us some delicious Philippino food and we were happy to meet some of the local kids, of whom stood outside the house and would yell 'Miss Chiara' and 'Mr Bruce' until we came out and gave them a wave. The closest we will ever come to being famous, I am sure. 

  

The owners of our favorite little guesthouse in Nepal, our fanclub that would yell outside until we would come out of our room.

We ended up spending two nights at the guesthouse and headed out feeling rested and relaxed. We spent another night camping along the beautiful lazy rivers that crisscross Nepal before we finally made it to the road that would take us north and back to Kathmandu. This is where things turned a bit pear shaped. As we had mentioned previously the program that we had been using to map or routes, 'Inroutes', doesn't work in certain countries, like Nepal, so we know where roads go and how long they are but we have little knowledge of grades or road conditions. We did the best we could asking whomever could speak to  if the road was traverseable for us on bikes. All the beta we gathered pointed to two options, one being about 2x as long and very indirect and another more direct but with many unknowns.  We finally came to the literal 'fork in the road' and made our decision. We took the shorter more direct route.  The first day and a half of this route were fine. We camped along another bucolic river where we bathed and cooked a simple dinner of noodles. Over night, however, a front passed through bringing with it cold and rain, the two things that made the rest of that day, maybe, the worst day of riding we have experienced in over 7 months and 8000km of touring. The road was of a grade that at times was too steep for us to pedal. Therefore we were pushing, to the cheers and thumbs ups of the passing trucks, up an extremely narrow road in wind and wet.  Things looked bleak until we came across a great little roadside 'chaat' house serving up steaming plates of daal bhat.  This gave us full bellies and warm our spirits.  We continued up to the first saddle where the views were amazing. We descended and crossed a beautiful reservoir thinking things were looking up. The rain had stopped but the road quickly turned to dirt, actually mud and then we started climbing again. The conditions deteriorated further as the light began to fade. Out of food, exhausted and realizing that despite all our efforts we ended up on a road that we just were not equipped, with our little foldies, to ride.  Luckily this road was the choice of routes for trucks heading to Kathmandu. We discovered that we were a mere 30km from the city but in these conditions we could have been 3000km as we would have had to push the bikes for a good portion of it. Finally we came to a consensus that we had fought a good fight but that we must wave down a truck and hitch our way back into the city. It turned out not to take only a few minutes and we were on our way, bouncing and splashing over some of the most rugged roads we had seen outside of the village we had visited. 

   

We came across these beautiful women dancing, Bruce eating our favorite snack in Nepal, donuts and tea.

 Getting into the city after dark posed a new dilemma. Our warmshowers host wasn't expecting us till the next day so we found a little eatery serving one of our favorite treats, MO-MOs, and we called the host hoping they would take pity on these fools. To our delight James and Julia were more than happy to host us immediatley and he even came out to find us and lead us back to his home, one of the cutest little places in a corner of Kathmandu that we had not even imagined existed. We were able to eat, shower (with hot water, a real treat!) and rest in their home. They were great and we shared a liking of Korean food, that we shared on our last night, and prepared to depart for India. 

  

We ran into this man and his elephant on the road, e elephant normally works on the national parks.  He gave us a ride.

How do we sum up our time in Nepal? We came in with so little real knowledge of the people, the lands or the culture. We had an idea for why we headed to this somewhat out-of-the-way, landlocked, and troubled nation but did we get anything out of our time? The short answer is yes, in spades.  When you remove the ever present blaring, bleating horns of the diesel belching trucks and smells resembling a burnt plastic curry, you find a nation of very gentle, happy people that are intrigued by visitors, happy to help, and delighted when they hear a foreigner utter a few simple words of their language. They couldn't be happier when you tell them that you actually like their traditional staple food of daal baht and they all want to stay in touch with you even if you only spend a brief time with them. The uncertain future for Nepal and its people however put a slit asterisk next to it all in your mind as you wonder, 'is this person really happy to meet me or do they hope that a friend from the western world meanshe a ticket out of Nepal?' Sometimes this interactions can be troublingly difficult to separate but I'm the end of the day it is hard to blame the, for looking for a way to better their lives.  We found out that a large portion of Nepali men are economic migrants traveling all over Asia and the Middle East in order to make money to send back to thei families. There were some real shine moments that gave us hope for Nepal. Such as meeting the young engineer/entrepreneur who had designed and built a prototype electric off-road motorcycle that would free up those stagnated by the fuel blockade from India. Or hearing that subsistence farmers are turning to cash crops like coffee (of which Nepali highland coffee is amazing!) which Nepal is well suited for and would bring in more money through less labor. No matter it is obvious that the long traditions that control Nepali culture and community are strong and wonderful to experience despite the problems of rebuilding that are sure to plaque Nepal for quite a time to come. 

Some of the beautiful landscape in the most difficult territory that we tried to ride.  Then came to our senses and hitched to Kathmandu.