Hello from Tabriz, northern Iran. Our Iranian visa runs out tomorrow, so we’re heading straight for the Turkey border, then on to Van to pick up Simon’s mate Anna, and hopefully Josh.
This post covers the leg from Kathmandu down into India, and across the big touristy spots of Northern India, all the way to the Pakistan Border. As usual more pics can be found on my facebook profile here. Enjoy!
Kathmandu: 23 February 2008
So after the trek we’d planned to spend a day in Kathmandu to do some washing and recuperate (in that order), then bugger off west to Pokhara then south back into India. It seems like a straightforward plan, but we hadn’t accounted for Nepali politics…
Like everything else in Nepal, petroleum products must be bought and imported from India. That means that the government owned Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) has to buy all of the fuel for the country from the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC). As most of us in the west know, fuel prices have gone up a hell of a lot in recent times, for reasons vaguely known but mostly accepted. However the Nepalese have a slightly less tolerant view, and whenever the NOC tries to put prices up at the pump to cover the increases, the Nepali people blame internal corruption in the NOC and some opposition political party will call a general strike, crippling the economy. So inevitably the government backs down and the NOC drops their prices again, and everyone gets on with their lives. This has been going on for a while now, and not surprisingly the NOC has hit some major cashflow problems, which hasn’t gone unnoticed by their major creditor the IOC. So inevitably the IOC has decided to minimise the risk, and have limited how much fuel they’ll sell to the NOC until they sort their shit out. So much to their disgust (but not surprisingly) the Nepali people find themselves hit with fuel rations.
Now a couple of blog entries ago I mentioned the strike we encountered in the coming into Nepal in the Terai Region spanning the border with India, during which a general sense of lawlessness prevails. Villagers in the Terai Region have to watch fuel tankers trundling past their empty petrol stations, up the valley towards the capital Kathmandu. Eventually a group of these villagers decide that’s not good enough. So, armed with whatever they can find they ambush some unsuspecting fuel tanker driver and direct him and his precious cargo to whichever village they hail from. By the time the police arrive the tanker is empty and the driver is released, relatively unharmed. Once one village gets away with it, others decide to give it a go. It doesn’t take long for the truck drivers to decide they don’t get paid enough to run the gauntlet so they park their trucks at the border refusing to move, leaving Kathmandu totally starved of any form of fuel, right from cooking gas to diesel.
So this is the situation we came back to after fifteen days of blissful ignorance frolicking in the mountains. We had about a third of a tank of diesel in the Hilux, which given the mountainous roads probably wouldn’t get us out of Nepal, and definitely not via the border crossing we wanted to use at Sonauli. We asked everyone we could (we even tried calling the embassies but didn’t get an answer dammit) but they all said the same thing -join the queue. It was a Saturday which is the equivalent of a Sunday in the west, and even with a fuel crisis the government controlled pumps wouldn’t open. So that meant the queue would definitely be at least one day, and we’d been told it could end up being anything up to three days long. Time was something we couldn’t afford, so we had to come up with a Plan B. Pat and I were despatched onto the streets of Kathmandu with a diesel can and the barest dregs of a plan, which pretty much involved finding anyone we could in authority and playing the Dumb Foreigner Card then hoping they’d take pity on us and/or see the potential for a bribe (which we were willing to pay by this stage).
So we caught a taxi to the only fuel station in Kathmandu that hadn’t run out, much to the amusement of the taxi driver who assured us it was closed, but we assured him we knew that but still wanted to go. Even though it was closed for the day, the queue stretched three vehicles wide about half a kilometre down the road. We walked past the queue of vehicles and the razor-wire barricades around the petrol station, to one of the friendly looking soldiers with AK-47’s guarding the place, who was obviously amused by the sight of two hopeful looking foreigners with a diesel can. After convincing him we were serious, he referred us to his senior officer who either wouldn’t or couldn’t see the potential to make some extra money for the day and told us to bugger off. With no other obvious tactic to get hold of some diesel from the pump (we’re not too schooled up in bribes and the like), we resorted to the much less elegant but highly efficient Plan C, the Black Market.
About a kilometre from the petrol station was another large concentration of diesel -the main bus station. Trying to look inconspicuous when you’re a foreigner carrying a bright yellow diesel can in the middle of a fuel crisis isn’t easy, especially when you’re as tall as Pat. But we slipped through the scrum of buses jostling for position on the ranks, and made our way out the back, where things were a bit quieter, and groups of bus drivers congregated in empty cabs killing time smoking and playing cards. We approached one such group of drivers, but we didn’t know any Nepali, and they didn’t know any English. We eventually got through to them that we wanted some diesel, and they laughed. When faced with a language barrier like this we had to resort to the one universal language that everyone understands -money. A 1000 rupee note got them moving, and before long we’d settled on a price of 1500 rupees for 10 litres -two and a half times the pump price. Without hesitation a young guy crawled under one of the buses nearby (we have to assume it was his bus) and cracked open the sump plug on the diesel tank, draining it into a bucket. After siphoning it out of the bucket into our can (avoiding the lumps at the bottom) we handed over the money and got out of their as fast as we could. Now I mentioned above it was hard to look inconspicuous, but now we had a half-full bright yellow diesel can! So we skirted around a police officer who was thankfully distracted by the chaotic traffic and jumped into the nearest taxi we could find. The taxi driver thought it was hilarious, even more so when we told him how much we’d paid, but Pat and I were quietly pleased with ourselves. We had enough diesel to get out of the country -mission accomplished!
24 – 27 February: Kathmandu – Pokhara – Sanauli (Nepal/India border) – Gorakhpur – Varanasi
So the next morning Josh left for the airport -he was heading to a wedding in Thailand and is planning to meet up with us again in eastern Turkey.
Pat, Simon, Lani and I had a lazy start and headed east on the road to Pokhara. The roads in Kathmandu we’re relatively empty -media estimates said only one-third of the vehicles in Kathmandu had any fuel. Most of those vehicles were stuck in the queues that stretched for kilometres either side of every fuel station, as news had just come in of a convoy of tankers that had agreed to go through the Terai Region after the government guaranteed an armed escort. All along the road to Pokhara expectant locals crowded on the side of the road waiting for buses which were very scarce, and inevitably full. About five kilometres out of Pokhara Simon spotted a queue which was only a couple of hundred metres long so we decided to stop and check it out, as we’d already used most of the black market diesel, and we realised we weren’t going to make it to the border.
We found out that a tanker was out the back dropping off the ration of 3000 litres of diesel right then. Twenty minutes later the pump was running, and the queue started moving. They were rationing how much they’d give to each vehicle, but we managed to wrangle 30 litres out of them, which was enough to safely get across the border. Within minutes all of our problems were solved, and as we pulled away from the station we saw the queue had at least tripled behind us in the time it took us to get to the front. As smug as we were, it was still hard knowing that the Nepali people will have to deal with this for the forseeable future. They can’t play black-market prices, and they can’t make a run for the border like we can.
By the time we made it to Pokhara and found the way to our accomodation it’s fair to say we were all a bit knackered and irritable. When we were flagged down by a group of teenagers standing in a decrepit booth by the side of the road around the lake, demanding a tax for our vehicle we weren’t in the mood to be messed with, and we let them know what we thought of their ‘tax’. The guys were standing in front of the Hilux, and despite the suggestion from the navigators seat that I use the bullbar, I reversed down the road and found a restaurant, where we asked the owner what the story was. It turns out that it was actually an official tax, and the guys who normally collect the tax were having their dinner, so they left the kids in charge. With our tails between our legs we headed back up the road, where they took our rupees and our apologies with the typical Nepali cheer.
The next day we hired bikes and rode to the other side of town to the International Mountaineering Museum which had been recommended by our guide, and was worth a look. On the way back through town we came across a Maoist rally, and despite my curiosity (and opportunity for establishing my career as a photo-journalist), we decided to heed the specific advice laid out by our embassies and avoided the rally in case it turned nasty. Instead we headed to the lake, and while Pat, Lani and I took the sensible option of hiring kayaks, Simon ignored the fact there was no wind and hired a square bathtub with a sail that he called a yacht.
OK so admittedly our kayaks were river kayaks, which meant it was damn hard to hold a straight line, but we still managed to easily out-pace Simon, much to his disgust.
I felt sorry for the local guy who asked me if he could have a quick paddle in my kayak when Lani and I came back to shore. Eager to impress his wife and extended family, he enthusiastically jumped in and started paddling, and merely managed to spin the kayak around almost a full turn. After letting him fluster about for a couple of minutes, I managed to grab the end of the kayak and pull him back to dry land. As I helped him out I assured him it’s always harder than it looks, loudly enough so his spectators could hear, so hopefully he redeemed some face.
So it was time to bid Nepal farewell, and we headed south the next day to the Indian border and onwards to Gorakhpur. As we crossed the plains of the Terai region we started seeing much more communist (Maoist) graffiti and flags, and even one in English, though I’m sure the ones in Nepali were much more inspiring…
When we tried to find lunch in one of the larger towns near the border we were faced with street after street of closed shops with their shutters pulled down and wind-blown rubbish collecting in the doorways. The strike was still well and truly in force, and the economic cost to those businesses must’ve been huge. Boredom and desperation can’t be a good mix.
The border crossing at Sunauli was much busier than the one we’d used going north into Nepal, and the officials were much more efficient. We somehow managed to pick-up a self-appointed helper on the Nepal side, who assured us he worked at the customs office, but avoided telling us that he doesn’t actually work for customs, and that we’re the ones who actually pay him for this service, which we didn’t actually need. Nonetheless he did find us a toilet, so we paid him a pittance and give him a quick lecture about scamming people, which I’m sure he already knew. Maybe he’ll think twice about harrassing Kiwis and Aussies from now on, but I doubt it. None of us could work out exactly how long the whole border process took, but we’re guessing about an hour and a half, which is good compared to some horror stories we’ve heard.
On one hand we were glad to be out of Nepal and away from the trouble that has started, and which will only get worse in the lead-up to the elections in April. But we were also sad to leave, as the people were so hospitable and friendly, and the scenery amazing. Maybe we’ll be back sometime, and hopefully by then things will have changed for the better for the Nepal people.
We stayed that night in Gorakhpur, and arrived in Varanasi early the next afternoon.
27 February – 3 March: Varanasi – Agra – Amritsar – Attari (Pakistan border)
We got a little bit lost in the middle of Varanasi, but thankfully one of the touts that most people revile (including us) spotted us and was able to suggest accomodation with off-street parking for the Hilux only a stones throw from the Ganges. With no better ideas we checked it out ended up taking it -one of our simpler accomodation choices of the trip!
The main attraction at Varanasi is witnessing life on the Ganges River. This bit of the Ganges is particularly sacred to Hindus, so they’ve built dozens of ghats, like temples, on the riverbank. We managed to get down to the river just after dusk and mingled with the crowds of Hindus and the occasional inquisitive tourists. In contrast to most crowded spots in India (of which there are many) the atmosphere along the Ganges at Varanasi was much more calm and peaceful. The sceptic in me thinks it was simply the absence of rickshaws and car-horns, but I’d like to think it was because of the positive vibe from all of the thousands of Hindus who were at Varanasi for a major religious pilgrimage.
We hired a boat at some un-godly hour the next morning, and as we cruised up the river the sun rose over our right shoulders and bathed the riverbank in a nice soft light. It even made the burning ghat (where they cremate bodies) look picturesque.
I thought it was quite nice, but you have to look past the details I guess. There’s something like seventy raw sewerage outlets pumping into that stretch of the river, and is places the water is so polluted it is septic. Pat had given the hotel some laundry to do, and as we passed the dudes thrashing the clothes on the bank of the river the rest of us sat back smugly and enquired if he had any white shirts he really liked.
His stuff came back OK in the end -well that’s what we told him, we left the windows down in the Hilux for the next few days though 
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We arrived in Agra the next day, and once again a tout found us while we were stopped at an ATM. After some serious haggling we managed to get a reasonable rate on the rooms, which I later found out was less than a bunch of Indian dudes were paying next door. With the vaguest outline of the Taj Mahal visible through the night sky from the hotel roof, we went to sleep in restless anticipation of checking it out the next day.
Getting up before dawn (again) we were rewarded with a stunning view as the rising sun caught the side of the Taj. We wandered the grounds, taking hundreds of photos and basking in the reflected morning light off what turned out to be a spectacular sight.
I had been a little bit sceptical, but there’s good reason people rave about the Taj Mahal. You have to feel sorry for the king who made it as a tomb for his wife -soon after it was built his son kicked him out of the palace and imprisoned him in the Red Fort, where he spent the rest of his life having to look out over the river at his masterpiece from a distance. We checked out the red Fort that afternoon, which was nice, but not in the same league as the Taj.
The road between Agra and Delhi was the best we’d had in India. Two lanes each way, minimal traffic, and most importantly hardly any motorbikes, rickshaws and cows. We found our way into Delhi with a few hiccups but nothing major, and we basked on the grass in the middle of Connaught Place with the warm sun on our faces and good coffee and decent bakery goods going down very well. That was the extent of our time in Delhi unfortunately, and that night we finally pulled into Amritsar about midnight after a hell of a long drive.
Amritsar is in the Punjab province of India. When Pakistan was granted independence from India, the border was drawn right through the middle of the Punjab. The province is home to the Sikh religion, and the Golden Temple in Amritsar is the focus of their faith.
We met a British dude at the temple who had converted to Sikhism years ago, and we spent ages listening to his explanations of the Sikhs persecuted past, and the ritual of bathing in the waters of the Golden Temple, which is the Sikh equivalent of Muslims pilgrimage to Mecca. As much as we enjoyed listening to him, time was getting on, and we had to get to Pakistan that afternoon. The pressure to make it to the border was obviously getting to Simon, and after we’d driven 5000km in India, he managed to get the first scratch on the Hilux as he squeezed past (or through) a cycle-rickshaw carrying a load of planks. Don’t worry, we’ve been giving him shit about it constantly since then!
Once again the paperwork was reasonably straightforward at the border, and after a bit of a wait we were ready to cross into Pakistan. Unfortunately it meant it was also time to say good-bye to Lani, as she was staying in India while Pat Simon and I tackled the Muslim world. After the goodbyes we drove the few hundred metres to the border. Luckily there’s an elaborate border closing ceremony staged here every evening, so we were able to take photos of the border for a change.
It’s a cliche, but India had definitely been an assault on the senses. Personally I don’t think I’ll hurry back, but I can understand why some people love it. Most people ask about the driving in India, and to be honest it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Once you’re actually on the road, and have got into the ‘expect the unexpected’ mindset I mentioned in an earlier post it’s not too bad. Readjusting to driving back home could be an issue though!
That’s enough for now. Next post will cover our quick dash through Pakistan. Take care!
