Sorry for the radio silence. My blackberry didn’t work in Nepal and the establishments we stayed in only came with one extra – mosquitos! By the battalion. Wireless Internet wasn’t really going to be on the cards. So to give you all an update on the past few days of driving:
Day 1: We departed from Kathmandu - all of the rickshaws gathered in front of a palace in the middle of the city, it was utter chaos.
The locals had no idea what was going on, neither did we, shambles. We were concerned about navigating our way out of the city and drafted in a local taxi driver, who had driven me in the morning. He used to drive rickshaws a few years ago before they were banned and was raring to get back behind the wheel again! We pushed all of our rickshaws to the front of the queue and then just went for it – allegedly there was some sort of flag waving supposed to happen but we took the view that travelling amongst that many rickshaws, all heading in the same direction would be a disaster. And so we were off, much to the surprise of everyone else, although given how quickly we saw them later on they must have left just behind us. Driving through Nepal was fantastic, winding roads twisting through the valley, heading west out of Kathmandu. We had a pretty good first day with only a couple of minor breakdowns. We arrived into the first stop, Bharatpur, and had luckily booked a hotel before we left Kathmandu – it was chaos when we arrived at sunset, with every team desperately trying to find accommodation. Hotel wasn’t bad and the food was edible. The Nepalese people were incredibly nice to us, both on and off the road, always waving and smiling. Stark contrast to here in India where it is a lot more aggressive, especially on the roads.
At the end of Day 1 we saw the end result of a pretty big accident, 1 minute earlier a team had been going too fast around a corner and the rickshaw had flipped over onto its side. They are so top heavy when you have bags etc strapped to the roof – all very dangerous. They were pretty shaken up and had numerous cuts and bruises. We helped them out and got them a lift to the city where they could get help. The rickshaw was pretty bad with the whole front left section of the roof caved in. A reminder that it can all happen so quickly.
Day 2: We continued south and crossed the border into India.
The border crossing was chaotic, and in the end it was just completely open. People were coming and going in a huge stream of traffic and were completely unchecked. We drove through without anyone checking our passports, we went back however to get the stamped. We broke down quite a lot on the way to Gorackpur, our next town in India. This place was truly awful and I have never seen as many mosquitos in my life as were in the bathroom. Slept with my mosquito net taped to the wall. Everyone became ill from the food – horrific. Not to be recommended. On day 3 2 of the rickshaws broke down a lot. 30 mins out of Gorackpur we lost drive and pulled over to take a look. Some local mechanic changed the spark plug but fastened it too tight and as they were revving the engine the spark plug flew out of the back and stripped the thread from the head. Basically he made it 10 times worse! We then had to go to the market which didn’t open for 2 hrs to get the part. Over 3 hrs later we were on our way. We arrived in Varanasi where we decided to stay at the Taj hotel which was really nice and just what we needed! Day 4 we decided to take all of the rickshaws to a local dealership to get them serviced and looked at. This took all day and we didn’t pick them up until 5pm. In the process of taking my car for a test drive I blew the oil seal and white smoke started pouring out of the exhaust. Needed a complete engine rebuild which took until 10pm. Basically spent the entire day at the garage! Which brings us to today! We got up at 4am to take a river cruise along the Ganges which was great as we haven’t had much chance to do some sight seeing since we left kathmandu. We are currently on our way to the tiger park and hope to arrive at some point in the evening. We’re all pretty shattered and need to catch up on some sleep!”
Topic: General Travel |
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Tags: adventure travel, Venere
About the author
Neil is 27yrs old and lives in Chelsea, London. Neil left Harrow School in 2000 and undertook his gap year in Pakistan where he taught English and Soccer in a school near Lahore. Since then Neil has taken part in a number of charitable fund raising activities including a trek through the Himalayas, a marathon in Pakistan and a white collar boxing event. Neil graduated from the University of York in 2004 where he studied Economics & Politics. Neil joined the Mergers & Acquisitions department at Ernst & Young in London and then moved on to Dresdner Kleinwort. For the past 18 months Neil has been advising a number of start up companies on their fund raising options as well as assisting with financial and operational planning. Neil has spent the last 3 months working for Venere.com in an operational role.
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