Nepal – Riding With Giants

What do you choose as your holiday if you’ve just spent four months solid guiding bike tours around the Himalaya? If you are Damon and Suzie, you ride the same bikes around the same mountain range in the same clothes, but in a different country…

But this foray into Nepal is not just a holiday, oh no, as we are also here to reconnoitre new Enfield-mounted trips for our touring outfit, Blazing Trails. As far as work goes, though, this is about as close to a holiday as any bike-lover is likely to get. 

Our trip started at Shimla in the Indian Himalaya, from where our hard-worked 500 Bullets have carried us 400 miles east to the Nepalese border at Banbassa, a curious little post on Nepal’s far western corner. There’s hardly any four-wheeled traffic crossing here due to its nowhereness and the punitive road taxes being applied to Nepali or Indian vehicles using the other nation’s roads. That’s not to say this place isn’t busy. There are hundreds of heavily-loaded bicycles and small motorcycles, dozens of horse drawn carts and throngs of pedestrians balancing international trade on their heads.

We check our Indian registered bikes and ourselves out of India, cross a kilometre of no man’s land and present ourselves to the Nepalese immigration department. This is the second time I have crossed into Nepal at this border, the first was two years back, when there were some exchange rate shenanigans regarding the purchase of my visa – priced in US Dollars. But the corrupt official I had the displeasure to meet then has now been replaced by a polite pair, who welcome us to Nepal with the minimum of hassle and cleanly request the $40 each for our visas. Our bikes are less welcome and the customs wallahs who relieve us of around £1.50 per day to import the bikes temporarily are frostier than a penguin’s toenails.

It is explained to us that we must pay the ‘road tax’ in advance for a given time – we allow ourselves 21 days – but can extend our papers at any border post, including the airport in Kathmandu. What we’re not told is that the bikes can only remain in Nepal for a maximum of one month in any year, a rule that will sneak up and bite us in the arse later in the trip.

But for now we are free of officialdom, doff-doffing along the smooth tarmac of the Mahendra Highway that runs east-west through the Nepalese lowlands. Although this is Nepal’s biggest road, it is almost devoid of motorised traffic, though bicycle and buffalo use is heavy near bigger settlements.

The differences between lowland Nepal and plains India are immediately apparent from the saddle. Despite geographical similarities there are far fewer people around and, despite Nepal having a poorer population on paper, there’s less poverty apparent on the streets. Less litter, too, and people generally look that bit cleaner and healthier thanks to a relatively pollution-free atmosphere.

When you think ‘Nepal’, a vision of endless mountains doubtless springs to mind, but here in the south, the countryside is lush, flat farmland and sub-tropical forest. It is into this jungle we turn a few hours and 90 miles down the road in order to visit Bardia National Park. The following evening finds us on foot, stuck between a bull elephant and a huge male Indian rhinoceros. Neither our guide nor ourselves are worried about the rhino, but while watching him the tusker almost cuts off the return path to our raft. Guide panics and runs, we follow, elephant bolts into the bush, relieved laughter all round… not the kind of thing that happens in the Peak District.

As places to stay are few and far between in western Nepal, the next day finds us doing ‘a big one’ – over 200 miles. The majority of our route is once again on the quiet, fast Mahendra Highway where we are able to sit at 50mph, gently munching distance and enjoying our saddle-sore sightseeing. It is elephant grass harvesting season and tribals’ legs are emerging from the forest under mini haystacks. Other locals sit recovering from their labour in colourful sari-clad roadside knots, awaiting the next round of buffalo carts that will carry the grass to the villages for their annual re-roofing.

Next north, and up, heading for the tourist hangout of Pokhara, trekking gateway to the Annapurna range. The road gets tornado twisty as we climb beside deep gorges, bright blue rivers frothing hundreds of feet below. With serene scenery, traffic so light and the churning thuds of the single-pot engine, it’s easy bliss to fall into a bend-swinging rhythm. All is relaxation… until a bus comes charging around a bend at an implausible angle of six-wheeler lean, or a herd of goats bursts from the slope above to create a bleating vortex of stupidity on the road ahead.

When we clear the last ridge before Pokhara, Nepal’s second city, we are welcomed to the valley by one of this world’s great views: the Annapurna Massif: a block of jagged rock and snow, 34 miles long, reaching five miles high.

Pokhara is too easy a place to enjoy life. Just £3 secures us a clean double room by the huge lake. There are restaurants and bars for every taste, fresh, cool air and, oh, them mountain views… 

So we dawdle. And dawdle. And realise our bike documents are fast expiring. No problem, Kathmandu and a bike tax extension is but a fine day’s ride away. Maybe.

Life goes on apace in Nepal’s capital. We wiggle through streets that bustle with life of all kinds, past shops full of new Chinese goods, the roads a moving mass of Toyota pick-ups and small Indian motorcycles. This may be one of the world’s poorest countries, but there’s affluence aplenty in Kathmandu. And just like its colossal neighbour, India, the contrast between wealth and desperation is stark.

Moving from our guesthouse in the centre of the old city to meet a travel agent on the outskirts takes us through cobbled backstreets, where shabby workers munch fried snacks at street-side canteens; across the ring-road, where the shops are packed with new motorbikes and engineering goods, to a river. A river of black, treacly sewage, the crossing of which by bridge requires the closing of the nostrils, otter-style.

On up the hill into the posh outskirt of our destination, the electric steel gates of paranoid affluence harbour the Toyota Landcruisers of ostentation against the eyes of the light-fingered envious. Here plainclothes police with uniform haircuts whisper rumour into black plastic Motorolas. Here be the money and the influence. This is where the NGOs pay big rents to hide from the unpleasantness of their missions beyond the wall, where the big-buck mountaineering companies operate, where you can’t have too many bedrooms and the private international schools cluster around one’s little darlings. It’s really quite pleasant.

The evenings can throw up more social contrasts. A mile’s walk carries us from Durbar Square, the World Heritage Site to which our Freak Street lodgings are adjacent, to Thamel, centre of the trekker/traveller scene. Here those awaiting their hikes shop, drink and scoff among quasi-western-style supermarkets and eateries. The nightlife is loud, the Khukri Rum pricey, the food international-ish and the streets a little seedy. Every corner has its whispering hash sales-person, ages ranging from early teens to geriatric. 

On the way home, a nasty scene: street kids, rag-clothed, gutter-gathered with fabric glue-soaked bags to their scabby faces. A day’s begging brings in enough for some substance escape. My pity is full. 

Still, that’s capital cities and you’ll find a similar scene in London or Lisbon; Delhi, or Bangkok if you do the looking. And Kathmandu is truly wonderful, one of the world’s great metropoli, every courtyard a living museum, each street a wander through the past-meets-present life of a city yet to be sanitised with glass and steel. People often think of Nepal as a Buddhist country, but the vast majority (80 per cent) are Hindu, with only somewhere around ten per cent of Nepalese following the Lamas. Nevertheless, their presence defies the statistics when it comes to architectural edifices. Every 233^rd footstep, take a turn to the right and you’ll find a super stupa, decked in prayer flags and circled by the reverent.

Exploring the city has devoured yet more of our time, we’ve been here over a week and the bike papers are now expired. So we spend a whole morning trying to track down the correct office in which to extend our ‘road tax duty’. When we finally find the right men in grey, we’re told our bikes can only remain in the country for a total 30 days, leaving us one week to get the bikes out. Another problem – we have turned up on just one bike. We have the documents for both, but a seven-day extension can only be issued in the physical presence of the machine itself. All pleading that the bike must exist falls on dull brains and surly ‘rules is rules’ rebuffalls. So, after a whole morning of trying to find the right place to pay the tax, then a person who knew the right person, who knew the right person, who could point us to the person who could sell us a form… then finding the… we walked out frustrated to anger and empty-handed.

Further reconnaissance to the Tibetan border cancelled, we have to leave wonderful Kathmandu on a dash back to the Banbassa border in the hope we will be released from the country without too many problems or exorbitant bribes/fines. But not ten miles from Kathmandu central, we ride into red tape at a police checkpoint. Every document excepting the out-of-date tax is examined. Suzie is told her Indian driving licence is not valid (it is) and we are kept hanging around as the uniformed extortionists try to squeeze us for ‘fines’ – bribes. In the end we simply walk away, saying ‘arrest us then.’ They don’t. 

We are leaving by a different back road, heading for another lowland wildlife reserve. There are a thousand bends for every car and a hundred waving schoolchildren per hour as we climb out of the Kathmandu Valley and broach the ridge at Daman. Wow! Even from over 200 miles away Everest is horizon-defyingly huge. But we only have time for a cup of tea with the big fella, before whirling back to the plains.

A couple of days are spent relaxing with beers and river sunsets at Chitwan National Park, in the name of research. We’d love to stay, but have around 400 miles to cover and three days in which to do it. That might not sound like much of a time/distance equation, but on these bikes, on these roads… A night at Lumbini, mosquito-infested birthplace of the Buddha; another back at Bardia, then the border.

It becomes apparent that friends at our last overnight stop have phoned ahead to smooth our passage. There’s some official bluster over our expired documents – there has to be – but to our relief we are eventually allowed to leave, fine-free, and asked to please visit Nepal again.

Northern India is just as we left it: intense, grubby and chaotic, but welcoming, fun and friendly. Delhi is but a day away along straight roads crammed with maniacal death wish drivers. It’s a far cry from the mountains and jungle of Nepal and sums up the contrasts offered by South East Asia. In the morning you can be watching a rhino crossing a river in a primeval jungle; a day’s ride later sipping chai in the world’s most frenetic city and planning your next incredible trip.

Nepal’s recent past has been a turbulent, intriguing and bloody one. More than a decade of insurgency by Maoist forces against the ruling monarchy cost over 11,000 lives, before the warring left-wingers and royalists laid down their arms and in 2006 agreed to move toward democratic elections. There were delays, but the ballot was eventually held around 18 months back, with the Maoists gaining the highest number of electoral seats and forming a government. They also dethroned the less than popular palace incumbent, King Gyanendra.

Having turfed out the monarchy, the parliament’s next major jobs were to get together and thrash out a new constitution – a process whose deadline is now expired – and to decide who a new army would comprise of in terms of combining Maoist and ex-Royal Nepali, now simply ‘Nepali’, soldiers. There remains tension among the populous over these and many other issues, but the peace, on the whole, has held. Nepal being such an ethnically diverse country, there’s still plenty to argue about, with each political party, ethnic group, union and business lobby campaigning vigorously for their own agendas. This means there are still violent clashes reported in the papers, kidnappings, murders, and ‘bandhs’ (paralysing strikes that close the roads), but compared to the carnage that went before, things appear better for most people.

Nepal’s number one industry is tourism and in the last two years numbers visiting the country have risen sharply. Meanwhile, however, the few other industries based here (besides general trade) are in decline, mainly, it seems, due to unionism. With the left holding sway, wage-claim strikes are a daily occurrence, closing factory gates, leading to shutdown. It is almost impossible for a business to dispense with an employee’s services, even if he has punched the boss in the gob, and stabbed his dog with a gold-plated Khukri.

The Maoist Party, and thus the Government of Nepal, are/is listed as a terrorist organisation by the US State Department. But although there is sporadic violence between political groups, attacks on foreigners are very, very rare. As Nepal’s only reliable foreign exchange industry, tourism is too valuable to lose.

Geography

Nepal is a landlocked country, a little larger than England. It is bordered to the north by China and to all other sides by India. For such a small country, Nepal is incredibly geographically diverse. Eight of the world’s ten highest mountains rise from Nepali territory, including of course the biggest of them all.

The southern area, on the edge of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, is just a few hundred feet above sea level (abv). Thus, the mountains that cover two-thirds of Nepal rise incredibly steeply and it’s possible to be standing at 1000ft abv, looking up at the summit of Annapurna 26,500ft abv.

The southern plain is known as the Terai and covers some 20 per cent of the country. It is geographically identical to much of northern India, but has suffered from less ‘development’. Once a malarial swamp, there is much pristine wilderness. Until recently, tigers, rhino, elephant and other big game were relatively common, but recent poaching is threatening numbers.

Climate

Nepal has five climate zones, ranging from ‘Tropical’, to ‘Arctic’ and five seasons: summer, monsoon, autumn winter and spring. The best times to visit exclude summer (too hot on the plains) and the very heavy monsoon season, when travel can become impossible.

Population

A population of 30 million live mainly in the mountainous regions. After the Kathmandu Valley (with 5 per cent of the population) the southern flatlands, the Terai, is the most densely populated and agriculturally productive. The literacy rate is just over 50 per cent.

Language

‘Nepali’ is the official language, with around 60 per cent of people using it as their day-to-day tongue. Other people will use local dialects or languages that are derivatives of Indian Sanskrit. English and Hindi (to which Nepali is similar) are widely understood in places visited by tourists.

Money

Nepal is the world’s 83^rd largest economy, with 76 per cent of the population employed in agriculture. The Nepali Rupee is not an independent currency, but is linked to the Indian Rupee at a rate of 1.6 Nepali Rupees to each Indian Rupee. Nepal is incredibly good value for the western visitor.

Getting Around

Motorcycling is the only conceivable way to travel around such a beautiful country, but near half of the country has no sealed roads. Where roads do exist, they are generally of good quality with very little traffic. Roadblocks as part of ‘bandhs’ (general strikes) occasionally block routes and protesting students may also stop traffic with ribbons and demand a local ‘tax’. Refusal to pay is generally not met with any violence.