Kathmandu - Jiri - Kathmandu - Trisuli - Kathmandu

  Kathmandu, Nepal
Saturday, October 20, 2007

Itinary : Kathmandu - Jiri - Kathmandu - Trisuli - Kathmandu.
Dates : 19th October to 21th October 2007
Mileage in Nepal : 600 km
Mileage so far : 6150 km


I will maybe disappoint some of you but I didn't go to the goat slaughtering ceremony...I consulted a few people and none had the same version of the event! Some said that it was at 7 am, some said noon, some said that you had to pay and some even said that foreigners were not allowed! So I decided to ride out straight away...When I did my itinerary in Singapore, I read in the travel guide that there was a nice little town in the east of Kathmandu called Jiri. It's in the mountain and it's the last city before the road ends and where the Mount Everest trekking starts.

left-right-left-right-left-right!

little town between two mountains...

nice riverside town...

rivers are blue in Nepal!

The playground...

sunset in the himalayas...

So off we went...The main road was nice until the turn off to the secondary road which brings you to this Jiri town. Well the turns are nice and the scenery is nice, but the road is really narrow...Barely wide enough for one car! Well it would be acceptable if there were only cars on this road but there are only tata buses rushing...Making you think that the drivers must have a bad diarrhoea kicking in! So it was 180 km of great turns (with bad surface of course but that's why we use those bikes) and great scenery, but almost died a couple of times...
 

nepalese double decker bus...

camping the time to repair their bus...

On our way there, maybe 10 km before reaching Jiri, we got stopped on the road by a few Nepalese people that had put in place a home-made barrage with a rope. Was a bit scared at first, until one of the guys showed me a yellow paper written in English and it said : "receipt for donation". With the few English they knew, I understood that they were building a monastery and that I was going to be the one of the sponcors, like it or not! So I gave a generous 5 usd which I realised was a lot when I saw the locals hand over 50 cents! So I found the scam funny and wanted to take a picture, and after a few snaps, the guy had the guts to tell me that it was 1 usd / picture! I started talking French to him and he understood that I wouldn't give anymore money...
 

rope barrage for monastery donation...

 







After a long day riding and a few scares, we finally reached Jiri in one piece...and no more petrol...At least not enough to come back to Kathmandu. The shortage is genuine and we learnt that it had been going on for a year now...Diesel is not a problem to find but petrol is...I now understand why those tata buses are driving flat out...They have no fuel problems! Anyway, we didn't find any petrol on the way and Jiri was our last chance to fill-up the tanks...Well I was fine and could make my way back to Kathmandu but Kevin was short. When we arrived in Jiri, we arrived in a creepy town...It was dark and it was dead! I thought I would find a nice little mountain town with some foreigners in cafes, getting ready to go trekking the next day...But it was dead and desperate Nepalese were running after us! Trying to get us to stay in their house which was converted into a so called hotel...Finally we decided to choose one of the guys, the one that spoke the best English and we asked him at the same time if he could find petrol for us. So he brought us to this place in town were there was tanks and jerry cans all over the place...Not sure what really was inside but we had no choice and the scene was quite entertaining...And guess what...I never thought that I would beat the price of 2,50 usd/liter that we paid when we were at the customs but we did! We paid 3,20 usd/liter! This time we leaned forward and no lubricant...

2666 m on our way to Jiri, it's a hill in nepal!

Jiri town...

room 101 at Jiri...1 bulb, 2 bed and that's it.

scary refueling at Jiri, with intereting filter...

 




 
The next day I had planned to go to Kodari which is the border town to Tibet, and see if we could have a daily visa to visit the city of Khasa. But when I saw how Jiri was, I had doubts on what could Kodari be like. The road going there was really bad...Well it was not a road but rather a gravelled path...When we arrived in Kodari, we arrived in a cluster of houses rather than a town. The road was not even gravel but rocks!

the welcoming town of kodari...

traffic jam in kodari...

landslide? i'm not scared...

gravel road to kodari...

So we struggled a bit to get our way trough the town to finally reach the border. There's an agreement between Nepal and China, so that people living in less than 30 km around the border could cross freely and there was a door which seemed to be permanently open. So when we arrived, Kevin rushed a bit and went trough the door that led to the friendship bridge that links Nepal to Tibet without stopping at the customs. He wanted to take a picture on this bridge first before discussing if we were to go to Khasa or not. Unfortunately, my bike is a bit wider and couldn't go trough the door so I asked if they could open the main gate which they accepted. While the customs were on the way to pick up the key to open the gate, Kevin rushed back as fast as he went on the bridge...But he came back with a pale face! He explained me that while he was on the bridge, he didn't see the white line in the middle of the bridge that separates Nepal to China and as he was shooting some pictures, a disguised Chinese guard sneaked up to him before trying to grab Kevin's camera. Of course, Kevin was not ready to let go of his pictures and when he resisted a bit, the Chinese guard held his gun and asked him to hand over the negatives which was not possible because Kevin had a digital camera. So Kevin jumped on the bike and rushed back to the Nepalese side of the border and back trough the door. Wow, now I'm glad I didn't have to meet a narrow-minded china man holding his gun...So after that when I asked if Kevin still wanted to go to Khasa, the answer was a negative one...And there was no way we would stay in Kodari so we headed back towards Kathmandu...

friendship bridge, border between nepal and china

safe on the nepal side...

the door to tibet...With Khasa in the background..

 








 
On our way back I had my first big and real "tata scare" where I found myself nose to nose with one while I was going upwards and him down.. As the distance narrowed down to a couple of centimetres between our two vehicles, I tried to squeeze myself on the grass on the left and when I realized that there was a drop off, I jammed the brakes in a survival reflex and dropped the bike on the right where the road was...Lucky enough, the tata bus stopped just on time with the front of the bus leaning against the windshield of my bike which was on it's side. I had to explain the driver with hand signs that I couldn't lift the bike as he was against it! 
 

had a few tata bus scares in narrow road!

More scare than harm and I was back on the road again, looking for a petrol station as we didn't want to bend forward again once in Kathmandu...Lucky enough, we found a petrol station and a real one this time! Price was finally more logical and we paid a reasonable 1,20 usd/liter. So we decided to buy jerry cans so that we could take some reserve petrol with us, and not pay 3 usd/liter when in Kathmandu. So we went around this small town to look for jerry cans and bought 4 x 5 liters jerry cans for a ridiculous 1 usd. Taking extra fuel with us seemed like a good idea at first, but it ended-up a messy one...The ridiculously priced jerry cans were actually not that ridiculous and it was really worth 25 cents...On our way back, the jerry cans started to crack and leak! A bit like an "open bar" school party where you order 5 glasses to make sure you have drinks left after dropping half of it on your way back to your friends, we arrived in Kathmandu with maybe 4 liters of fuel out of the 10 liters we had started with...

real nepalese petrol station...finally!

filling up jerry can for petrol reserve!

 
The next day, I had seen enough of Kathmandu and decided to go ride to Trisuli for the day and come back in the evening. Kevin was not feeling too well and decided to rest at the hotel. So off I went and it was a very similar road as the Jiri road...Meaning narrow road and loads of tata buses...But was still nice to do this mountain road.
Nice scenery again and stopped a couple of times until I dropped the bike...I was trying to take the sunset and lost my balance while trying to grab my camera in my pocket...So don't try to rotate the picture, it's the bike on it's side and not a vertical road...
 

terracota road to trisuli...

nice sunset and "bikeset"...

tiring stop at trisuli...

Nothing really planned tomorrow...Still waiting for Kevin's visas...He will normally get them in 3 days...Maybe I'll start heading off towards India by myself first tomorrow because I've had enough of Kathmandu...