On to Nepal - Jim, 12/9/08

I'm just beginning to realize how far behind we've fallen with this blog, so I'm going to try to catch up today, if not I'll try to finish tomorrow, since Thursday we will leave Pokhara for Katmandu and that will take us away from computer access for a day or two.
Monday night about 7PM we headed over to the New Delhi train station to catch our overnight train to the city of Goraksphur which was the first leg of our trip to the town of Pokhara in Nepal. As we waited on the platform with thousands of others we started hearing announcements of delays to various trains, some of 2 to 3 hours and our spirits started to drop, but when they announced our train it was only 20 minutes late, which suddenly didn't seem so bad. It turned out it was about 40 minutes late but that still was OK. We boarded in a crush of people, found our assigned 2nd Class sleeping location and settled in. Each sleeping section on the train car had bunks three high on two sides an aisle that went through to the next section and two bunks on the far side of the aisle. Adam and I had been assigned a top bunk and a middle bunk, when people weren't sleeping the middle bunk was folded down to become a seat back for the lowest bunk. Adam was tired so he climbed into the top bunk and was quickly asleep, I wasn't so sleepy so I took up a seat on the bottom bunk along with our companions in that section. Our companions turned out to be a Nepali family from Katmandu, the parents and two grown sons probably in their twenties. They were on their way back from Delhi where the father had just had a checkup following a July kidney transplant, which he had somehow had done at a charity hospital in Delhi with a little help for medications from family in the states. It turned out the father was a high school English teacher and spoke quite good English as did most of the rest of the family. We had a pleasant conversation and at one point I offered them one of the oranges I had with me. This started them offering me food which ended up being part of the supper they had brought with them, it was really good, a whole lot better than the usual train vendor food. Just as we were finishing up Adam awoke and was also treated to dinner. After a while we set up the middle beds for sleeping and I crawled in for a good nights sleep. In the morning we began to realize that the train wasn't making as much progress as scheduled - we were two to three hours behind and ended up over four hours late into Goraksphur, which threw a wrench into our carefully laid plan to get to the border before dark. It's always a lot easier to deal with the touts and bureaucrats at transition points like this in the light of day, also we didn't have any way of knowing how long the Indian exit office and the Nepali Immigration office would be opened. We bid goodbye to the family we had spent the night with and with the help of another Nepali we had met on the train, went out to find a bus to the border, several hours ride away. We ended up after endless negotiations in a jeep like vehicle with 9 other people on our way to the border. It ended up, as most things do in India, taking longer than advertised and it way full dark by the time we got to the border. Luckily the Indian office that gave out the exit stamps was still open and we went through there very quickly, crossed the border, which amounted to simply walking a few feet down the busy commercial road, and after a few false starts found the Nepal Immigration Office. Either they hadn't paid their electric bill or there was a power failure going on, a common occurrence, because when we walked into the office area it was lit by a few tiny candles, a little bigger than the ones that are used on birthday cakes. This slowed things down a bit, but at least they were still opened and we would be able to cross the border. After we had filled out the forms, given them the required pictures and paid the fee we were given our visas and were officially in Nepal. Now all we had to do was choose from the hundreds of rickshaws drivers begging for our business and ride the 3 K to the hotel that we had picked out from the guide book. We accomplished this, but not without having to pay more than we were told we could get the ride for, but we were tired and really thankful when we got to the hotel, which wasn't a disappointment. All that was left for the day was dinner, in the hotel, and sleep.
We were up early the next morning and after a quick breakfast off to find the bus to Pokhara. Again we had some problems, the first bus that said they would get us to Pokhara was actually going to Katmandu and we finally figured out was going to drop us at a town way out of our way where we could transfer to a bus to Pokhara. We bailed that bus at the first stop and found a bus going straight to Pokhara which also charged us the correct price. At first we were riding inside the bus, it was old, the seats were broken and the back seats where we were sitting smelled of urine. Not a great situation. As more people got on we noticed that some of the riders were going up top and we quickly followed them there, it wasn't exactly plush or comfortable but it was a lot better than inside and the view were great. We stayed up top until the last half hour into Pokhara when it got to chilly to stay up top.
We arrived in Pokhara after dark to the usual, not having any idea what part of town we were in and not knowing exactly how to get to the lodge we had picked from the guidebook, and we soon attracted a crowd of touts all of whom wanted to take us where we didn't want to go. We finally settled on a cab and actually got delivered to our lodge at not much over the going rate. Only one problem, the Lodge was full or so they said. Actually it turned out they had one small room with one small bed in it which didn't have access to the bathroom after the restaurant at the lodge closed. We finally figured out that we could put an extra mattress that the Lodge had on the floor and make due, so we took the room and have spent the week there at the rate of approx. 65 cents per night each, which tickled our cheap bones.
Well I'm going to do another to be continued here, I'll try to finish this off after lunch or tomorrow.