Merry Christmas to Me: I'm staying in Nepal

Sort of. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Cara, Jamey, Anthony and I were all on our way out of Nepal, hoping to reach the far west border by Christmas Eve. Our friend, Cab, has been planning a short road trip for the four of us around Northern India. We were to let him know when we think we'll be crossing the border at which point we would figure out a meeting day and point. We had trouble getting in touch with Cab and when we finally spoke with him on the 24th, he mentioned a wedding on the 26th of December that he wanted to bring us to. We had a decision on our hands: leave immediately for Delhi and forfeit our Christmas plans of gluttony and laziness or stay in the border town until the 28th of December at which point Cab would maybe be able to pick us up. Indian weddings are supposed to be memorable experiences, so we decided to rush down for the wedding. We hopped on our bikes as the sun was setting, got stamped out of Nepal and reached the Indian crosspoint once the sun was down only to be told by the man patrolling the immigration office that the border was closed. Great.
When crossing into Nepal, we were also told the same thing, however, we were able to convince the border control to let us through. We spoke with the man on the India border for a minute and convinced him to let us through "past hours", which, for the record, we think is possibly a lie. We go and grab our passports for him to stamp BUT (drumroll...) Cara can't find hers. She looks through all her bags and notices that the pocket which she usually stores her passport in was open during the entire ride between borders. The road between borders, which stretches for at least a 1/4 mile, was gravel and full of ditches. With the help of several border police equipped with massive search lights, Cara unsuccessfully retraced her steps for the missing passport. Nothing.

Fast forward six days and I am sitting in Kathmandu with Cara. Since I needed to go to a U.S. Embassy to get extra pages put in my passport, I accompanied her on the 18 hour ride from the border to Kathmandu. We successfully got her a new temporary passport, were able to get her a new Nepal visa and now are awaiting her India visa which is supposed to be ready on January 2nd. Looks like the two of us will be spending New Year's in Kathmandu, while Anthony and Jamey are in the border town with our gear.

A Sign That I've Been Gone For a While

I cut my own hair today and don't think it looks all that bad...

Reporting from Somewhere in Nepal

Hello, as you have probably noticed, my prophecy of limited internet access in Nepal has proved to be true. So true that by the time I finally get to an internet cafe, I have forgotten what has happened since I last blogged. Keep a hand-written diary did you say? Pshaw, that'd be WAY to easy of a solution. Anyways, my writing-time dramatically decreased whenI got my hands on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I finished reading it about two hours ago which is why I'm struggling to remember what we have been up to over the past week. I want to say that we escaped Voldemort at the ministry of magic but I think I'm getting my worlds mixed up... and yes, I'm officially a nerd, thank you very much.

Two days ago we left the farm located near Royal Chitwan Park, located in the Terai region of Nepal. I had high hopes for this place -- Chitwan is home to one-horned rhinos, tigers, and elephants -- however, the beauty of Chitwan was overshadowed by the beauty of our last farm. The last farm was set on top of a mountain with beautiful views of neighboring hills, lakes, and snow covered mountains. Chitwan is in a sub-tropical flat region where the morning fog does not clear until around noon. The region is pretty, nonetheless, and the family we stayed with was lovely indeed, however, it was a hard transition considering we had been spoiled with beauty at the last farm.

The harvesting season had passed at the farm in Chitwan, so we spent our first day clearing grass, plants and weeds from some of the plots near the house. We learned that we were making space to plant sunflower seeds that had been sent to the farmer by a previous volunteer. The next day we needed to go to town to get money for an elephant ride that our host, Balarm, told us he could arrange. The round trip, he said, would take 3 hours. It took 7. We didn't get anything done on the farm. In town, however, we succeeded in stuffing our faces with samosas and buying what seemed like an endless supplies of cookies, peanut butter, and chips. On the ride to and from town, which we were told was a 45 minute ride but was actually 90 minutes, we successfully got sick of riding on top of busses. We had to fight our way through a crowd onto the bus that would bring us back to the farm. I managed to get a seat on top of a thin metal rod (on top of the bus) which REALLY hurts after 10 minutes of bumpy road.

To tell you a little bit about these buses, Anthony and I counted enough seats in the bus to accomodate 28 people if the bus were to be operated in the U.S. (i.e. one set per passenger). We estimated that said buses were probably holding around 75 people since they stuff the bus full of people and load the top of it with people too. We counted about another 20 on top of the bus with us when we returned to the farm that evening.

We did eventually make it to Chitwan for the elephant ride but because we lost track of time when we got to see a tiger (in a pen, of course) our elephant ride was cut short. Elephants are impressive creatures. Since they don't move all that quickly, I thought they'd be great animals to take self-portraits with, however, I negleted the fact that elephant heads are very large and it is impossible to get an entire elephant head in the frame when the camera is held a human-arm-length from said elephant. I'm glad I tried. I think that by the end of this trip I'll know all the pros and cons of taking self-portraits with different animals -- so far I've only attempted them with dogs, kids (baby goats), and elephants.

Now I am in sitting in an internet cafe in Butwal, Nepal, which is located 43 km north of Lumbini, which is where Buddha was apparently born. We're not going to make it to Lumbini, instead we are going to cycle another 400 (or so) km west to cross the India-Nepal border. We are thinking we will be in India in 10 days or less, which means we don't know where we will be for Christmas. All I know is that we will probably be in a place where we can eat a lot (I'm thinking a Christmas feast is in order).

Butwal seems to be the last major city on the map before we get to India, so there probably won't be any updates for another 10 days or so, which means, I wish you all happy holidays!!!!

Riding on top of buses.

So much has happened since my last post that I don't even know where to start. This morning, Anthony, Jamey, Cara, and I left our first Nepalese farm. The farm, which we were at for 8 days, was located on top of a mountain outside of Pokhara. 10 days ago we packed up our gear, bode farewell to Pokhara, and spent a good hour riding, fully loaded, up a mountain only to find out we were on the wrong mountain. We turned around, spent another two nights in Pokhara and then set off again for the farm. The farm, we were told, was located only a few kilometers outside of Pokhara but was about 6 km up a mountain. The first kilometer was a steep incline up a paved road. The other 5 km were up a steep unpaved, nearly un-bikable road. The dirt was too loose to bike on and there were lots of medium sized rocks in the road to bring the bikes to a complete stop if you did happen to get a stretch of bikable road. All in all, our ride up the mountain was 2 hours of hell. A few days later, Jamey, Cara, and I decided to ride the mountain without our gear and it took 30 seconds of biking for me to start cursing the road. We road downhill for maybe 15 minutes, which left my arms completely red from all the vibrations of the bike going over rocks. On the way back up, village kids started chasing me, which is fairly common and annoying. I thought I would try and out bike them and instead ended up dramatically falling off my bike and smashing my elbow when I hit another rock that unexpectedly brought my bike to a complete stop. I felt like a real rock star when two 12 year-old boys pulled my bike off me, wiped the dust off my butt, and pushed my bike while I gasped at how much my elbow hurt. I had a dead-arm for a good 2 minutes, which allowed me to think about how horrible it would be to have a broken bone on top of a mountain. Then I realized that I barely had a scratch to prove I fell. I am completely fine -- I just couldn't sleep on it that night.
When we arrived on the farm, we found out that the farmer had no idea we were coming. Although we had been told the farmer was expecting us, the coordinator for WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, the organization that we're volunteering through) failed to mention to the farmer that 4 Americans would be arriving. The number of volunteers on the farm went from 6 to 10. Two days later another American showed up unexpectedly bringing the final count of volunteers to 11 (7 of which were Americans).

Our days at the farm were great. It is coffee harvesting time, so spent our time harvesting beans, hulling them, and washing them. When we weren't working, we could be found drinking coffee (or tea in my case), sitting on the mountain side enjoying the view, playing with the baby goats, raiding one of three stores for cookies or chips, or washing ourselves at a roadside spring (there was no running water on the farm).

Our hosts, Surya and Amma were amazing. Amma fed us two huge and delicious meals a day one around 10 am and one around 6 or 7pm. Both meals consisted of rice (and lots of it) with dal (lentil soup) on top of it and a side of one of two vegetables (usually cauliflower and potatoes) and a dab of amazing chutney that consisted of tomato and roasted sesame seeds. Seconds were always pushed on us and I definitely needed to rest more then once after eating.

Today we left the farm. Since the road was so treacherous, we decided to take the one bus down the mountain to the main road. At 9am, we loaded our bikes on top of the bus, put our bags inside, and waved everyone at the farm good-bye from (drum roll please...) the top of the bus. Jamey, Cara, and I rode the bus like any true Nepalese person would (seriously, sometimes buses are packed full inside with about 20 people sitting up top and these are buses riding the main highway!) and let me tell you, I liked the road much more from the bus than I did from the bike. We felt like we were riding a roller coaster ride that was maybe less safe... We figured that should the bus roll off the mountain on our way down, it would be safer to be catapulted off the bus from the top, as opposed to being tumbled down the mountain inside the bus. We got to the bottom safely and, as it now looks, will not be taking any buses in the near future.

We are now on our way to Royal Chitwan Park. Until then!