The trip back

Saturday, 21 April

We woke to a torrential downpour, hope it has helped top-up the water supply. As promised, we'd hired a car to take us back to Siliguri – not a jeep but Sonam in his trusty Maruti 800. About half way down he forked off Hill Cart Road and the railway route to take us on a short cut. The reason it was shorter was because it had less zig-zags, i.e. the road was steeper! I'm sure the views would have been great but probably a good thing that most of the trip we were in clouds so couldn't see the drop on the corners. We stopped off at a tea estate on the way down and saw real Darjeeling tea being processed. The smell is fantastic and it was amazing to watch the machinery, most of which is over a hundred years old, in action.

Our tea stop on the way down – part of the estate we visited

In Siliguri we switched to the car the travel agent had organised to take us to the airport across the border. Or at least that was the plan. I had seen in the papers that the Madhesi Forum (a political group from southern Nepal) had called a strike and thought this might create some delays. It did, they had closed the bridge at the border by having a mass meeting on it. Having cleared the Indian border post, our driver informed us that he could go no further. So off we go on foot following everyone (only 1 other, quite nervous, tourist who was rethinking her plan to get a bus in Nepal) else and then discovered that they were avoiding the bridge by going under it and fording the river! Fortunately this is the driest time of year so the river bed which was about 200 metres across only had a couple of little streams running down it and at the deepest these were only 2 ft so, shoes off, trousers rolled up and bags on our back we waded through them to get to the Nepal border post on the other side. Hot though it was, even climbing up the steep bank the other side was not too bad and made me realise how much thinner the air had been in Darjeeling (elevation 2,000m) where we had been puffed out walking up the smallest of slopes. Another confirmation that I don't want to go to Everest or Annapurna Base Camp and discover how thin the air is there.

So finally we got to the airport only to discover that having rushed to make it in time, the plane was late due to bad weather in Kathmandu. And when an hour and a half later we did take off we quickly discovered that it was very bad weather. It was easily the most unpleasant flight I've had, a small (19 seater) airplane is pretty uncomfortable in a thunderstorm and we were pitching and yawing all over the place – though not needed I felt better having checked there was a sick bag in the pocket in front of me. It was good to finally land at Kathmandu even if it was in a huge downpour with torrents of water flowing across the car park.

Back home and glad to have one day to get sorted out before we are back to work on Monday. According to the newspapers we should have another day off on Tuesday to celebrate the first anniversary of Loktantra (democracy) when the King handed over power following the people's revolution. Seems a long time ago now.

Cheers

Roshan

P.S. Hope you've spotted the neat little widget from Justgiving that links to our fundraising site. If you haven't donated already, please feel free to do so – it will make me feel that writing this and the pain of uploading the pictures over a slow dial-up connection is all worth while :-)