Shigatse to Kathmandu, Nepal

Travelogue entry from October 8-12th, 2003

In Shigatse, we rented a jeep through the hotel where we were staying, and after an hour of negotiating with the driver about who would pay for what if anything went wrong, we agreed to set off in the morning. We went through the monastry village of Sakya on our way to Everest Base Camp. The monastery is built like a fort and painted with pinks and reds that you don't see elsewhere in Tibet. At Everest Base Camp we took countless pictures of the big snowy mountain at the end of the valley. On our first day, clouds were still lingering from the snow storm the night before and people waited for hours to photograph little glimpses of the mountain that would suddenly appear through holes in the clouds. The next day was clear as could be and we hiked up to the foot of the mountain's lowest glacier.

Yesterday we reached our last 5,000 meter pass (about 17,000 feet) on our way to the border. I stood on the dry plateau and the whole massive Himalaya was spread out before me. Crooked snow covered peaks from right to left. Prayer flags fluttered the background, strung from the pole that marked the pass, and were nearly deafening in their numbers. Our driver quickly got us back into the Landcruiser and we plunged off the edge of the switchback road on the first of the days 'shortcuts' that would get us to the border before dark.

I had not realized until recently how Indian Nepal would be. The English just washes over me. The billboards, the radio station, I can understand everything. The Indian people populated Nepal with their clothes and religion thousands of years ago and I didn't know until now.

We ate our last Tibetan breakfast this morning (the woman who ran the restaurant was stuffing plastic bags in our pocket, giving us the thumbs up like we'd need them, as we got the rest of our friend Momos to go and headed out the door). We walked down the steep winding streets to the border checkpoint where people lied about loosing their permits or not getting them from their tour guide, and the border officials let them through (choosing to believe the liars rather than going through all the difficulties of confronting them). It was a half hour bumpy ride in a teenager's jeep down to the Nepal side where everything was 10 times more colorful and 20 times more cheerful. We were happy to see a big picture of the Dalai Lama enshrined in the cafe where we ate (something that had been so noticeably missing in Tibet), and waited for our driver to buy an ugly chinese-made blanket at the border market before we began our 4 hour bus ride through the green waterfall filled valley to Kathmandu.

We're there now and the motorbikes are ripping through the narrow streets. Things are shockingly cheap and we're in a luxury hotel when compared to the 15 yuan dorm beds we had in China last night. As we drove into town tonight, the sun set on the high snowcapped peaks of the Himalaya. You had to squint your eyes to tell them apart from the billowing clouds.

Maoists: There are checkpoints on the roads heading into Kathmandu. After crossing the border I did a double-take over the first guard I realized was carrying a very large gun. Most of the military guards are wearing lovely new camouflage uniforms that may very well have been supplied by the United States. Vehicles with foreigners are usually waved around the checkpoints, whereas normal Nepalis must get out of their bus and walk through a barb-wire chute, that somehow proves they are not a Maoist, before they are allowed to reboard their bus on down the road.

It's hard to avoid the tourist slum of Thamel, where we're staying in Kathmandu. As we ate a lovely cooked breakfast yesterday under tropical trees, served by young men in starched white shirts, Bronwen noted that it felt like being on the Titanic. Thamel would be the last place that you'd notice the country was sinking as you enjoyed hot fresh rolls and chatted with Indian men trying to sell you Tiger Balm.

The newspapers seem fairly upbeat about the civil war (it's debated whether or not the word 'civil war' is appropriate) and they frequently refer to battles where equal numbers were killed on either side as 'Yet another setback for the Maoists'. Most of the violence still seems to be in the far west of the country and the paper today claimed that the moaists had suffered defeat in the mountains and would now try to win support in the Terai (the plains that lead to India, where most Nepalis live).