Nepal (Aug 2014)

Duration : 4 days, 3 nights

Starting Location : Lucknow (U. P.)

Destination : Kathmandu & Pokhra, Nepal

Mode of Travel : Car

Route : Lucknow (U. P.) -> Gorakhpur (U. P.) -> Siddharthnagar (Nepal) (via Sonauli border) -> Bharatpur (Nepal) -> Hetauda (Nepal) -> Kathmandu (Nepal) -> Manakamna (Nepal) -> Pokhra (Nepal) -> Butwal (Nepal) -> Gorakhpur (U. P.) -> Lucknow (U. P.)

Day 1 (Lucknow (U. P.) to Siddharthnagar (Nepal))

This was the first long trip We planned after getting friend’s car (Grand i10) in Oct 2013. We were total. We started early in the morning from Lucknow with 4 small bags in car.

Beauty of these kind of trip is that you don’t plan anything in advance. Sometime this is a drawback but that’s the fun of road trip 😉

So we planned on crossing Nepal border at “Sunauli” via “Campirganj” near “Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India“. As none of us was aware of route so we were relaying heavily on Google Maps. Somewhere around “Basti“, Google Maps showed a shortcut and we happily went ahead on that. This shortcut was supposed to save around 1 hour time but we got lost. Roads were not constructed yet in some areas and so we had to choose some other routes and so on. Instead of saving 1 hour, we lost around 2-3 hours and we still were no where near Nepal border.

It was already very late and International border closes around 6 in the evening. After some struggle and with help of locals, we were able to reach border around 5 PM.

We had no idea about the paper work needed for taking our car to Nepal so we contacted a “Guide” who was expert in these kind of work for few extra bucks. After getting temp car number for Nepal we crossed the border late in the evening.

It was already very late, raining heavily and we were tired from full day of driving so we started looking for some food and a place to stay.

We stopped at first restaurant we can find and sat in for dining. I would like to mention one of the great things in Nepal is you can use Indian currency :).

While dining we saw a family walked into restaurant and ordered some food. What surprising about that was the fact that they ordered some whiskey along with normal food and then we noticed this restaurant serves whiskey or other hard drinks. We were surprised as this was not a bar and still serving hard drinks. Later on we discovered that hard drink sale is not controlled but government here and any shop owner can sell these. In later part of our journey we saw small tea shops selling hard drinks.

After dinner we started discussing about place to stay and a student over heard us. He offered to show us a place he knew. It was a room above a Shop 🙂 As it was late and there were no Hotels in the area, we decide to go for it and asked for the rates. It was just 400 Rs for all 4 of us!

Day 2 (Siddharthnagar (Nepal) to Kathmandu (Nepal))

Next morning we started early for our journey to “Kathmandu, Nepal”. Clear roads, light rain along with decent sunlight and driving on the curves of Himalayas on the tune of Brayn Adams. What better we can expect from a road trip! We picked up route via “Bharatpur” and “Hetauda” as it seemed plain road without much turns. Weather and location both were awesome and we enjoyed our way to Kathmandu.

There were some scary moments on the way to Kathmandu. In mountain areas, road was single lane, turns were too tight and there was the only one driver in the car with 9 month driving experience in plains.

We reached Kathmandu in evening and stuck in jam looking for Pashupatinath temple. Again a student came to our rescue and guided us till temple gate. We looked for some place to stay and soon found 1 room for 4 of us in just 600 Rs for 1 night. So cheap right 🙂 After freshening up we went to temple.

At night we came across another issue…Money! Our calculations were wrong and we were left with just enough money to get gas tank filled up enough to cross the border. So we did the same and after full tank of gas, we were left with around 300-400 Rs. We went to sleep not knowing what we will do next morning.

Day 3 (Kathmandu (Nepal) to Pokhra (Nepal))

Again we got up early with just few hundred bucks in our hand. We decided to give ATMs a try. We read somewhere that ATM cards of nationalized Indian banks like SBI etc works in Nepal. Luckily this was true and we got enough money for rest part of our trip :). Now we planned on going to Pokhra. As usual, road in the mountains was awesome to drive on.

Somewhere on road we saw board of Manakamana temple. Not knowing how beautiful it was, we just stopped. Again we got surprised by knowing it was entrance of cable-car ride! Yes we have to take 2.8 Km ride to reach Manakamana temple at 1,302 meters height. Road trips are always full of unexpectedness, luckily good in our case. Cable-car ride was awesome, crossing over river Trisuli and over various mountain peaks.

View from the cable-car was great but view top was just awesome 🙂

After this great experience, we started our journey towards Pokhra. Soon we reached there are started looking for accommodation. We were lucky enough to get a good hotel at a very good price of 600 Rs for 4 for a night. After freshening up we took car for a ride around Pokhra.

Yes, we were surprised too to see a lady rowing our boat 🙂 After eventful day we had a leisure evening in Pokhra and went for peaceful sleep to get ready for return journey next day.

Day 4 (Pokhra (Nepal) to Lucknow (U. P.))

As usual we started early and enjoyed zig-zag turns of mountains in early morning. We planned on covering ~520 Km distance to reach Lucknow same day. Return journey was smooth except 1 roadblock. Just as we about to cross a turn, we saw a tree falling just around 200 meters in front of us. We quickly backed our car and waited for good amount of time after road cleared up 🙂