Part 21. Over the Himalayas to Nepal.

 We had to make some decisions at this point. We were low on money and could either continue our journey and run out of money or just give up and go back to Delhi with enough for 2 homeward flights. Fortunately British citizens could still get a flight home, funded by the government if they were deemed destitute in a foreign country, anywhere in the world. They simply kept your passport and made you repay the cost of the flight before you got it back. Hillary also thought she might get her father to pay for the flights if needed, so we decided to go for broke and carry on.

Following the jaundice, I now weighed only 7 stone and was quite weak, severely underweight for a 6ft man and although I felt really good in myself, I was a bit more prone to Delhi Belly and anything else that was going around so we travelled a bit more cautiously and stayed in (very slightly) better digs.
In Patna we had a great room overlooking the edge of the city and close to the little airport that serviced weekly flights into Kathmandu. Now these flights were in small single engines planes, often bought second hand or at least well used. There were about 16 seats and you could see daylight through the fuselage where the seats bolts had been moved to get more seats in.
This was now March 1975 and the flight was really quite scary. We lifted off pointing at the Himalayas and simply went into a steep climb with the mountains clearly visible below us at hardly any height, it felt as if you could have reached out and touched them at times. Every bit of wind caused the wings to wobble and the noises of the stresses could be heard clearly from within the cabin. Suddenly the plane levelled out over the summit and then took a steep descent into the valley and Kathmandu.
We found out later that an almost identical plane crashed going out of Kathmandu a month after, killing Sir Edmund Hillary’s wife and daughter. Close shave....
Now, Kathmandu and the people of Nepal. After India this was just a breath of fresh air, impossible to describe the way that I just felt completely at home. While there was a big contingent and history of hippies passing through, and whole areas of the city dedicated to catering to them, it remained a relaxed and comfortable place. The serenity of the Buddhist monks and ordinary mountain folk was such a relief. In my delicate physical state it was great to get a more varied diet and while it was important to seek out restaurants with good hygiene there was an abundance of relaxed places to eat and meet people in friendly hassle free environs. Many eating places carried proud announcements “No Dysentery Here” and “we boil our water before we use it”.
I sold the rest of my western clothes and belongings, watch etc, just now had a cotton Kurta that I had bought in the Mahatma Gandhi memorial store in Delhi and a couple of sleeveless tops, got rid of the rucksack that had travelled with me throughout and just rolled my stuff into a tube shape and carried it with a string over my shoulder.
We couldn’t afford to trek into the mountains but visited the fabulous temples in and around the city before heading out, I can’t stress what a lovely race of people the Nepalese were. On the outskirts of the city and around the temples we were constantly offered Tibetan tea and snacks at peoples family homes, the young monks would chat effortlessly with us in pidgeon English and the smiles on these people’s faces will remain with me forever.
We met a lot of Tibetans who had fled over the border because of the Chinese invasion and continued persecution, ethnic cleansing and worse, though I only really caught up on the situation after I got back to the UK . While there, we just enjoyed their company.
We travelled on to Pokhara and down to the land border through villages like Putali bazzar, Waling, Dobhan and Siddhartenager. We got the cheap local buses and stayed over with families who had made their sitting rooms into little stop over places for travellers ( the original Airbnb ? ), eating with the family and leaving a little money for the privilege. We crossed back into India at the small land border crossing.










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