36 Hours later

and we finally reached Kathmandu. Apparently, I greatly underestimated train delays in India. What was supposed to be a 17 hour train ride turned into a 27 hour train ride. No joke. The upside was that we were seated in the sleeper section of the train, meaning that each one of us had a bed to sleep on. The downside was that the porters messed up and refused to bring our luggage (three bicycles and three body bags) to the luggage car and instead insisted we put the luggage on our bunks. We were lucky enough to fit everything into our compartment and our things only occupied one bed. We were unlucky in the sense that the entire train was booked, so two of us had to share a small bunk.

The train was delayed long enought to keep us from catching a night bus to Kathmandu but we were able to catch a horse drawn carriage and cycle rickshaw to bring us across the border, argue with the border control to issue us visas 'after hours', and hire a jeep to drive us the 5 hours over windy, mountainous roads to Kathmandu. We are safe and sound in Kathmandu but we definitely had quite the adventure getting here.