Great first day cycling in Nepal. Of course, it was a rather short day. The good ones always are! I'm in the decent-sized town of Atariya, just had a little map powwow with the son of the "hotel" owner.
Crossed into Nepal yesterday at quite possibly the world's most relaxed border crossing. You wouldn't even know it was there if you weren't looking for it. The Indian immigration treated me to tea and we discussed the price of sugar in India. When I approached a guard station expecting a search, the guard looked at my passport, lifted his arm toward the dusty road and said "Go to Nepal". Fine by me. There were little villages 100m on either side of the border and people were walking all over the place, so I guess no one cares what the locals do (I saw my money-changer from India at my hotel reception in Nepal that night and was like "but wait, weren't you...over there?"). The Nepal immigration was a guy's house: we sat down at a table, I gave him $110 for a 90-day visa, and he took the calendar off the wall and counted out 90 days. And that was it, I can stay here until Christmas Eve.
The Nepal side wasn't terribly different from my last few days in India, maybe fewer trucks and machines and simpler houses. Mahendranagar was a rather large town with way more ammenities than I expected: I had fresh cake this morning! But the real difference is the people. Almost everyone I pass is so excited to see me, and they wave and shout "Hello" with these infectious smiles. In India there is more shouting and staring and when you stop at a shop you have about 30 seconds before there are 50 people surrounding you watching your every move. Here it seems so relaxed, people wave and go about their business. Kids shout "bye bye" as I bike past or run up to the road, bring their hands together and greeting me "Namaste". I really like this place so far.
The only real unfortunate thing is the plunge in hotel quality. There's a bit of charm to these places but much more grime and wall cracks. But they're cheap, part of the adventure, and survivable: this one has a small poster of a beach-scape which livens the room up a bit; I'll include a picture next time and you can decide exactly how much.
I'm realizing that everything I own is starting to break. My bike pump kicked the bucket today, and I was lucky to be in a town where I could get a (much larger) replacement. The bike has held up beautifully, and nothing catastrophic has befallen it yet, but slowly things are getting damaged. Shifters are coming loose and brake levers have been tossed around. The most serious is severe wear on the chainrings, to the point where the chain doesn't grip at all in certain gears. Tomorrow I break the 8000km threshold, and I suppose that sort of distance is hard on a machine. I'm hopeful that Betty the Bike can survive another 10 days or so to Kathmandu.
Anyway, tomorrow is the start of some big festival called Dasain. Can hardly wait to see what happens. In a few days I enter Bhardia National Park where I'd like to stop for a bit and go tiger-spotting on an elephant. Camping seems to be more possible in this country but then again there are leopards and tigers running around so maybe I'll reconsider a bit. Animals don't attack people once they're endangered, right?
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