The road to Kathmandu

Crossing the friendship bridge: 1 May 2014

We said good bye to Sonam and the driver at the friendship highway border between Tibet & Nepal and walked across the bridge over the gorge. Not only did we enter a different time zone, Nepal is 2hrs 15min behind Tibet or go from a Buddhist Country into a predominantly Hindu one, or switch from a right hand drive to a left hand drive, it was more like entering a parallel universe where the two sides of the border couldn't be more different. It reminded us of crossing the border from North Korea via Train into China. From the paved roads and orderly Chinese immigration on the Tibetan side to the informal, higgeldy-piggeldy Nepali side where we would've walked straight-past the immigration office had someone not called us back! The culinary smells were different and the way people dressed was different, jeans, t-shirts and flip-flops replacing formal Chinese officialdom and traditional Tibetan clothing, it was a stark but enjoyable contrast. Our Tibetan guide, Sonam, told us that when he was little he had once come this way and there was no road along the gorge on the Nepali side – well there still isn’t much of a road. The road up to Everest base camp was for the most part in better condition than this international trading highway lined with colourful Tata trucks, with hand-painted liveries that resembled the Nepalese equivalent of the Philippine Jeepnees. The temperature and the climate also continued to get warmer. In contrast to Tibet where the main crop is barley and the farmers were ploughing and sowing, on the Nepali side of the gorge further below people were already harvesting their wheat. Every bit of land in Nepal seemed to be cultivated and the small terraces up the steep gorge walls were very picturesque. The gorge started from the top of the Tibetan Plateau and ran almost all the of way to Kathmandu, it seemed to be endless. We wondered what compelled people to make their way up its perilous cliffs to find the Tibetan plateau. In leaving Tibet, we also leave the cold and the necessity for our cold weather outfits behind. We arrive in Kathmandu quite exhausted and happily enjoy our first hot water showers for over a week.