A Morning Elephant Ride

I dragged myself out of bed early—I had an elephant to ride before getting on the 9:30 six-hour bus to the Nepal-India border.

The lodge provided a vehicle to take me and two other guests over to the community elephants, and we climbed stairs up a wooden platform to gingerly step out onto the elephants back and then into the saddle.

I was hanging off the back this time—penance, maybe for having a good view last time I did this—and most of what I saw looked like this:

Hmmph.

By Bus to Chitwan

The sunny roads of Kathmandu were empty as the Citylink bus pulled out of town at seven in the morning. And as we started on our way to Chitwan National Park, I noticed that the roads were empty in the countryside too.

It wasn't until several hours into the journey that the Nepalese man sitting next to me explained that there was a public transportation strike today. Only the tourist buses and private cars were running.

That explained why so many Nepalese were on today's tourist bus.

We stopped for a rushed breakfast at a casual countryside rest stop an hour in, and I ended up drinking Nescafe across from a solo traveler who casually inquired as to my origin. Turned out she lived around the corner from my old Marvel office and taught at Hunter College.

The bus wobbled alone along the narrow, curvy road through the green foothills of Nepal. When we had a flat tire, no one seemed to mind. The bus staff whipped the old tire off and replaced it in a flurry of efficiency. The passengers loaded back onto the bus and were off again.

Last Night in Kathmandu

I sat in the cafe near my Kathmandu hotel eating a grilled yak cheese sandwich while reading up on Chitwan lodge possibilities and then hotels in Varanasi—my, there are a lot of bedbugs in Varanasi—when my laptop seized up into another of its revolving beachball fits. The laptop hadn't been the same since it flew off the motorbike at the Gabon-Congo border. I waited impatiently for the beachball to stop, and that's when a kitten seized the moment to jump into my lap. She curled up and went to sleep.

That seemed auspicious, so I went ahead and booked Sapana Village Lodge for tomorrow night in Chitwan. I'd been to Chitwan in 1998, and remembered it fondly. You get to ride elephants while searching for rhino. We'd seen a half-dozen rhino back then, both from elephants and from a Jeep and even walking (which was terrifying but fun). Unfortunately a number of the rhino had been poached by assholes during Nepal's intervening years of political strife.

One wishes there were a way to convince users of rhino-horn medicines that 1) their supposed powers are mythical and users are complete fools and 2) even if they did work, the sexual prowess of a rhino-horn-med user is a pretty poor reason to kill a rhino. Can't get it up? So what. You'll live, unlike the poor rhinoceros that was killed for your worthless self.

An Old Friend and Past Guest Star

I'd started nosing around online a few days ago in my Kathmandu hotel room and had a bit of a panic.

Seat61.com—a fabulous site that has been explaining the world's trains to us since the early part of MariesWorldTour 2001—had showed me how to buy the India sleeper train tickets I needed for part of my overland journey from Nepal to Bhutan. The best way, it seemed, was to book them here, at Cleartrip.com. This way they were confirmed, final, easy, authentic.

But there sure weren't many left.

I found myself scrambling for any A/C sleeper I could get. Ah, that's the key. A website called IndiaMike.com pointed out to me that while only a few trains went through Varanasi en route to New Jalpaiguri (the jumping-off point I needed near Bhutan), lots of trains went through Mughal Sari, some 20 kilometers from Varanasi.

I grabbed what I could get. August 22, from Mughal Sari to New Jalpaiguri. I added a an overnight trip from near the Nepal border to Varanasi. Now I had a schedule, a reason to leave Kathmandu. And soon.

But first, I went to see my friend Sareena.

But Is It Made Out of Tigers?

Lasagne. Sinatra. Kathmandu.

And Tiger Balm. That goddamned Tiger Balm. It's everywhere. Just when you've sat down for some comfort food in a cafe where you didn't really expect to hear Hoboken's most famous former citizen, a Tiger Balm salesman is in your face, furtively whispering as if he were selling illegal drugs.

"Pssst, Tiger Balm?"

I'm beginning to think it's a metaphor. Maybe he IS trying to sell hashish. But then, what are the other whispering salesmen selling, the guys who open their palms to reveal a small packet?

"Transport? No? Hash then?"

Ah, Kathmandu. As restricted and policed as non-Chinese tourism is in Tibet, Nepal is equal amounts free-for-all. Tourism runs rampant, creating a competitive atmosphere that can sell you all the hash and Tiger Balm any one person could consume in an entire lifetime, that can produce hundreds of tiny cheap guesthouses (but can't quite make them appealing), where if a trekking tea house is too full, a backpacker can just sleep on the kitchen floor.

Checking In

As I ate breakfast in the Ganesh Himal Hotel's restaurant, a familiar song came on in the background. I identified it in a second—I'd heard it many times. This was from the Tibetan Incantations CD, which I'd bought in 1998 after hearing it repeatedly on my last trip to Kathmandu.

"Nice to know that Kathmandu's Hotel California isn't, in fact, Hotel California," I thought. Though I did get sick of this CD over the next week.

Today I had to find a hotel, as there was no room at the inn tonight. I initially thought I didn't mind as the Ganesh Himal is a bit of a walk from central Thamel. Not too bad, but just enough that I was unlikely to scamper out on a whim. And for some, being out of Thamel is a good thing. It's noisy, crowded, and full of touts and tourists. I am not totally opposed to such a place. I am a city gal, addicted to convenience.

You Know You're Not In China Anymore When...

Here's one of the first buildings I saw when we pulled into Kathmandu.

After being in China and Tibet where Facebook is banned, this blatant attempt to capitalize on its brand came as a shock.

Who Put the Adventure Into Today's Easy Itinerary?

Two kilometers of mud near the Nepal-Tibet border separated me from the sealed road to Kathmandu.

Today was supposed to be an easy day. Cross border. Board bus. Arrive in Kathmandu and check in at the newish hotel, Ganesh Himal, which got good reviews on TripAdvisor. 

But this mud, which presumably resulted from all the rain washing the road out, presented me with a novel dilemma. Namely, how to cross it. 

But where there is a dilemma, there are entrepreneurs working out a solution. And here on the Nepalese border, local residents had become impromptu porters and guides. 

"You can ride piggyback," announced a helpful young man when I eyeballed the mud and then looked at my utterly inappropriate footwear. (My Tevas were uselessly packed away.)

Crossing to Nepal

Something was wrong.

I'd crossed from Tibet into Nepal—in the rain—and no one cared.

Where were the money changers? The taxi drivers? Where was Immigration? Didn't anyone want to stamp my passport?

I asked a guard at the end of the bridge for directions to Immigration. She casually waved me on.

Maybe it's just because it's Sunday morning and I was first through from Tibet today, I thought. And all of China is on one time zone. Which might make sense in Beijing but doesn't make a lot of sense out west in Tibet. So by crossing to Nepal, I'd gone back to 7:45 a.m.

Yes, that's right. Nepal is two hours AND 15 MINUTES behind China.

I saw no open doors, no signs for Immigration. Every business was shut. I walked down a hill and suddenly realized I'd paced the entire one-strip border town. I turned around and walked back, cursing the hill and my poor fitness. Immigration had opened while I'd been on my rainy stroll and was now easy to find. The officers cheerfully greeted me, sold me a $25 visa, and waved me down the block to a coffee shop that changes money.