Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
finally, i am able to carry on updating you on my travel - sorry, but after a week in china, my computer screen broke down and it took me 3 weeks to get it repaired in Beijing!
we left Kathmandu on Tuesday 3rd october at 7.30am - having packed all our stuff in the night before - first reaction was: its going to be a cosy trip - 20 people seating in the back of the truck with very few spare spaces! all, practically shoulders to shoulders.We put the sides up so that we could get a great view of the landscape we will be crossing - it is a different way of seeing things but very effective!
on this first day, nothing special really happened, it was a day where everyone was trying to meet everyone else and get to know each other - on my side, people find out i was gay pretty quickly, when after the first night out, someone ask me if i was single and had a girlfriend - i proudly answered that i was gay and happily dating John. it was a nice way to come out and never felt awkward about it - may sounds weired to some of you, but it felt good and "normal".
anyway, we drove out of Kathmandu, and through the Nepalese countryside, discovering some amazing landscape and villages, and seeing some odds scenes - like that guy seating on a sofa on the roof of a bus! LOL or these guys, using a "motobineuse" (french word) to pull their trailor and travel on the roads.
it was a day of knowing each other on the truck and our first stop helped breaking the ice - we stopped at a place called " the Resorts" for the night. after parking the truck, we had to cross a 100 m walking bridge over the valley - that was pretty unsettling as i never had to cross such bridge before - had to keep staring in front of me and not look down as we were over 120m high!
Despite having to camp, it was very confortable with some great food. While some of us decided to bungy jump or do some white water activities, i decided to spend the afternoon drinking beer and relaxing under the sun chatting to people. In the evening i even treated myself to the cold water pool and the sauna - that was great until i find out later on that i was feeding ground to a leech on my foot! LOL i got it from the Sauna room! i manage to get rid of it ok but it took ages to stop the small bleeding!
well, if all our stay over the next few weeks are similar to that first one, it s going to be very confortable....LOL i soon will be proved wrong! LOL
After an early start the next day, we made our way to the Chinese border at Kodari - it took us a couple of hours to go there but as we were warned by our Guide, it would take us the whole day to cross one bridge into China - Chinese Bureaucracy gone mad! unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures of the whole border which is a shame as it was an experience - both side couldnt have look more different - Nepalese looking very poor and dirty, while the chinese side was so clean and uniformed in its appearance.
As we crossed the bridge, we had to stop the truck in front of a red line that was dividing the bridge - had to wait in the nepalese side until we could meet our chinese guide (Tin Tin) who then would help us through the custom paperwork. We crossed the rest of the bridge by foot, having our body temperature checked by an instrument scanning our eyes - to ensure no-one was sick! The truck then followed us and got fully searched - creating a scare as a custom officer found out a spider on the side of the truck! LOL how pathetic was that! the spider was taken away for testing! that was unbelievable!!!! LOL
after passing that first control, we then went to another one were our passport got checked - 2 of us encountered problem - first, a taiwanese girl called Serena, had to face a long wait as Chinese officers were given her a bit of a hard time for not talking chinese while looking chinese. secondly, i had my passport taken away from me and checked multiple times, as they thought it as a fake as my eye colour sayed "bleu" and not "blue" - they never realised it was a french passport and not a british one!
anyway, after spending the whole day, it was decided to stop at the border town until the next morning - giving us the opportunity to enjoy our first tibetan meal and Yak Milk Tea! yum yum.... not! but fun!
- comments