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Our quest for the Chinese visa
Entry 86 of 242 | show all | print this entry |
Thamel, the backpackers district in Kathmandu, caters to your every convenience. Laundry service, bars, fancy restaurants, live music, trekking gear, supermarkets, souvenirs, postcards, bookstores, and every conceivable type of drug is here for the taking. The drug sellers are the most entertaining. They hang out on the street, trying to look like they just paused to peer in a window. As a tourist approaches they will maneuver themselves so they end up by your side. In a hoarse whisper they offer their wares. "Would you like some marijuana, sir?" "Magic mushrooms dry and fresh!"
But enough about that. We had business to attend to. You see, we had quite a lot of things that needed to be accomplished if we were to go trekking in the Himalayas over the next ten days. Number one on the list was the Chinese visa.
The Chinese visa was the only visa we did not have when we left the States (too far in advance). Originally we were going to get the Chinese visa in Delhi, but we needed our passport so much in India that it didn't seem like a good idea. We decided to apply in Kathmandu and go trekking while the visa was being processed.
There were a lot of "ifs" about the Chinese visa. In my exhaustive search of the net I managed to find three separate and quite different lists of requirements. The one that concerned us was the onward ticket. You see, we had a one-way ticket to Beijing and planned to cross by land to Southeast Asia. A lot of the time visa applications require a ticket out of the country. We were slightly concerned about this issue. Also the opening times of the embassy, and its location, all of which varied according to the source.
We started off early and got a taxi driver to take us to the consulate. He took us to the embassy and then the consulate, which are in quite different locations. We got the application (which I couldn't get off the Internet...stupid Adobe), and filled it out as best we could. We had a photocopy of our passport, which I had read you needed, and even a copy of our ticket for good measure. One source had said we needed to prove we weren't going to Tibet from here. When we finally got to the counter, we held our breath as she looked at that ticket for a long...long...time. But she accepted the application. Task one completed.
The next task was to get a plane ticket from Pokhara to Jomsom deep in the mountains. We didn't have time to do the trek both ways so we needed to fly in and walk back. I had reserved seats online about a week ago but never heard back from the airlines (why have reservations if they don't work?). Our hotel, hearing we needed 2 seats on the 12-seater plane for two days from now, called and we had tickets in about 5 minutes. A miracle. Now, and perhaps belatedly, we bought our ticket from Kathmandu to Pokhara. We were ready to go trekking.
Well almost. First we needed some more clothing. We found North Face "Windstopper" jackets in Thamel. As the guy explained to us: "The logo is fake, but the material is real." They do work very well.
We still had time to get real donuts at the bakery. I'm pretty sure we haven't had icing since we started this trip. Thamel has it's perks.
Tomorrow to Pokhara and then to the mountains. We'll do some sightseeing in Kathmandu when we come back.
~Travis
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