Long Road Out of Eden - Kathmandu, Nepal
Kathmandu, Nepal
We have been very fortunate to travel to some incredibly special places in this world. Places that are idyllic, serene, natural (i.e. barely touched by civilizaton) and beautiful. One could say that they are Eden-like. Three that come to mind are the Amazon region of southern Peru (Rio Tambopata Research Center), animal parks of Tanzania, specifically Ngorongoro Crater (which is reputed as being the site of the Garden of Eden) and now, Royal Chitwan National Park in Nepal. A very special place and one that we, unfortunately, have to leave today.
This is the furthest point West on our trip, so today we start wending our way back home. It will take us 3 days to accomplish that.
So, here is the first hiccup in our trip. We were originally scheduled to take a 3-4 hour drive today to the city of Pokhara and spend the night there. We would have an incredible view of the Annapurna Range of the Himalayas from our hotel situated high above the lake and then we were to fly from Pokhara to Kathmandu the following morning. However, there is the SAARC meeting (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) that just started today in Kathmandu. So, this entire country is in more chaos than normal. Domestic flights have been cancelled for today and delayed for tomorrow. Tomorrow we are flying to Beijing in the afternoon, so we can't afford to have our morning flight from Pokhara delayed. So, we cancelled our trip to Pokhara and instead scheduled a driver to take us on the 6 hour drive from Meghauli village of Chitwan to Kathmandu.
After our usual huge and delicious breakfast at Barahi Jungle Lodge, we said goodbye to all the staff that had served us so well over the 2+ days that we stayed there. I don't think I have ever had better service at any resort than we had at Barahi. Our Nepali driver was waiting for us in a relatively new 4-door Indian made Tata sedan. Pretty comfortable for our long drive.
So we set out, knowing that the first 90 minutes was going to be pretty bad as we had already driven this stretch of road when we flew from Kathmandu to the airport at Bharatpur. We were told that the rest of the drive was on one of the best roads in Nepal. That's like saying Highway 67 is one of the best highways in California. It may be paved, but it is pretty dangerous.
We took a barely two-lane road that followed the Narayani River for most of the drive. It ascends and descends, winding along the hillside on one side of the river. The views were beautiful as this was a tropical river valley. Very dense foliage on both sides of the river, with island peaks in several places that completely split the river in two. Reminded me of places like the Three Gorges region of the Yangtze River in China. However, riding on these roads is nerve-wracking. First, you are literally a couple of feet away from the edge of a cliff. You can see many places where the "guardrails" have completely broken and someone has gone over. They don't even bother to fix the broken railings. Then, there is the constant passing of slow vehicles, motorcycles, buses, huge trucks, etc. There are no such things as pass/no-pass zones as there aren't stripes down the middle of the road. So, there are many passes, going up a steep mountain road, entering a blind turn. We left at 9:30 this morning and we didn't enter Kathmandu until 5:30 PM!
The biggest reason for our delay was this SAARC conference, again. The army/police had setup checkpoints on this mountainous road where they checked the cars and luggage and made all of the passengers get out of the cars. We then walked through a checkpoint so they could check us and any bags we were carrying, like a backpack. They were presumably looking for weapons or explosives, but this whole country is such a farce. They do such a half-hearted effort when it comes to security. For instance, they will x-ray your luggage twice at the airport, but I was able to carry on a half-full large bottle of water with electrolytes in it. Try that in the USA.
This checkpoint had us stopped on the mountain road for about 90 minutes. It was so bad that drivers turned their motors off and got out of their cars. Once we made it through Checkpoint Charlie it didn't get much better. It took more than another hour to travel 8 miles because certain roads were closed to allow the dignitaries to travel unencumbered to local tourist sites, such as Swaynambuth Temple, which we had to pass on the way to our hotel.
We are staying at the Hotel Yak & Yeti, which is very famous in Kathmandu as it is a formal royal palace. A beautiful structure. As you can imagine, many of the foreign potentates are staying here. So, guess what? The road to the hotel was closed to all but the SAARC representatives. We could not drive to our own hotel. So, we had to stop about 1.5 miles away from our hotel, take up all of our belongings and trek to the hotel -- through rush hour traffic. Our driver, led the way, carrying our biggest bag. It truly sucked! What a Nepalese Cluster**** (no reason to sully the Mongolians!).
However, once we arrive at the Y & Y, everything got better. We were on the club lounge floor and they provided us with free drinks. They had chocolate and fruit waiting for us in our room. We had a wonderful dinner in their well-known restaurant, The Chimney, with a nice bottle of French wine. It was a great way to end a very long day.
Tomorrow, we leave Nepal and head to Beijing. Namaste for the last time.