Note: it has been quite difficult recently for me to keep up with the blog, between travelling, enjoying the places and recovering from sick episodes. My objective is now to stick to one article per week (occasionally more). Thank you all for your support 😘

We have been for 2 weeks now in Nepal, and I feel like that it has been way longer than that, given everything that has happened. Buckle up: we have a lot to tell you about!

Reaching Nepal – or don’t trust buses with AK47 stickers

Most of travellers going to Nepal will fly there and land at Kathmandu airport without hassle. But where is the fun in that? We are well conscious that our carbon footprint will be terrible at the end of our long trip, so the idea is to favor in-land public transportation as much as we can. Coming from India, we decide to cross the Indian-Nepali border by land, via the Sonauli checkpoint. Dozens and dozens of Indian and Nepalese citizens cross the border each day, at this key checkpoint ideally located at the center of the country. How hard could it be for us?

Useful information if you need to cross the border yourself (as of April 2024)

For once, we could not find a lot of material online regarding the documentation required for foreigners to enter into Nepal via land – many thanks to Thibaut, a fellow traveller who saw our call for help on Facebook and who guided us remotely. No special document is required for the Nepalese visa, you just need 2 passeport pictures, 50$ crisp dollars (be careful, damaged notes won’t be accepted) and your best smile. No visa required for Indian citizens, and the same for Nepalese citizens coming to India.

April 15th, we have just travelled 930kms by train from Osian, Rajasthan, to Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Next step: hopping in a bus to the border, and smoothly entering into Nepal. Wrong start, when the bus refuses to take us on-board because of a technical issue between the app we used and their internal tool. Nevermind – despite waiting for hours in the early morning, we have met cool young Indians, that we meet again for a drink.

We start to get used to travel issues, and we make a new booking for a few days later, not flustered. As usual, we wait for hours before being picked up at a random location, after many calls with the driver – who speaks English for once, a pleasant surprise! When we finally get in the bus, the driver asks us to sit for a minute at the front with him. It turns out that the bus is operated by Nepalese citizens, not properly registered in India and he would highly appreciate if we don’t mention its mere existence to the customs at Sonauli. Ooookaaay… We want to reach Nepal, there is no another bus so one’s gotta go with the flow!

Everything goes smoothly… until the driver assistant calls Dimitri and me in the middle of the night, and signs us to go outside. “You need to get off the bus now, two foreigners will bring me trouble at the border.” We try to discuss, but no luck. It is 3:30am, we are two foreigners with our bags at a petrol station 30min away from the border checkpoint.

The border is closed until 6am, wild dogs are roaming as usual, it is pitch dark outside of our petrol station. We stay put, and begin an epic walk at the sunrise to the border checkpoint. Our little pride? We enter into Nepal JUST BEFORE the group who was in the bus with us. Team Dimise 1 – Shaddy bus driver 0!

It is a beautiful morning, we have not slept for more than 24 hours, we have two new stamps on our passport and we feel invincible – let’s go to Pokhara!

Pokhara and our first trek ever – in the Annapurnas, no less!

Given our late adventures, we choose to miss Lumbini, the birth place of Buddha, located close to the border. The sooner we are in Pokhara, our target destination, the better we are! Thanks to my brother Jean’s international network, we are expected there by his Nepalese colleague Niru and her family, who will host us for a few days in their family house.

We thought that we had seen it all when it comes to bus trips in India, but man, Nepalese roads are an adventure in themselves! 😂 The many potholes make us jump on our seats, with 2 or 3 flights during the 6-hour trip. The views are stunning, it is worth it – even if you do pray a little so that your bus does not drift a meter too much to the left, to the emptiness. (We made videos, that we still need to download – to come!)

We love Nepal already: the landscapes are breathtaking, the processes easy, the people speaking English. We love it even more when we reach Niru’s parents’ home, where we are treated like kings, despite them being busy with the many events for which the full family gathered in Nepal. We stay a few days in Pokhara, a vibrant touristic city located around a lake. Pokhara lies at the foot of the Annapurnas, the West part of the Himalayas… even if you cannot tell, as a thick cloud of pollution and smokes from north India and South Nepal completely covers the valley. It does not matter: Pokhara is an oasis of peace compared to the major cities we had visited before in India.

We are in Nepal, now, so Dimitri and I decide to go for the first several-day trek in our lives: the Mardi Himal View Point. 5 days of us sweating a lot, early morning wake up alarms, overusing our legs and adapting to the heights – and we make it to the top!!! 5 days of walking through forests of blooming wild rhododendrons (the national Nepalese flower), avoiding buffalos on the path and climbing from 1700m high to 4200m high. Perhaps a calling of mountaineers for us? Pictures are worth thousand words, so….

We come back just in time in Pokhara… for the wedding!

Our lovely hosts – or celebrating with the Gurung

As mentioned earlier, we are super fortunate to be hosted by locals. Niru’s family is now spread around the world, between the UK, France, Japan and many more; they still keep a close link with their motherland, Nepal, where they gather in the family house in Pokhara. We experience the legendary Nepalese hospitality, and we are made feel like we belong in this vibrant and joyful family. (I still feel uneasy about “intruding” into somebody’s home, but I am only now starting to understand that this is a very West European way of thinking… Hospitality and home are likely wider concepts than the ones I have been taught to believe!)

After celebrating the wedding of a cousine, the family is getting ready to celebrate the wedding party of Niru’s sister, Rajeena, with Ajmeer. I cannot describe how honored we feel when we are invited to join in the party. Niru’s family are Gurung, an ancient ethny of Nepal mainly located in the Annapurna region. To pay tribute to this rich heritage, all women are to dress with the traditional Gurung attire… Including me!

All the wedding ceremonies have been done before, so the wedding party is a delicious dinner party, followed by traditional dances and a not-so-much-traditional dancing party. 🕺

If you are reading these lines: we said it many times already, but thank you all for making our stay in Pokhara memorable!

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After roughly 2 weeks in Pokhara, it is time for us to go… Next stop: Chitwan – one of the oldest wildlife protection area in Asia. Stay tuned to see us on the tiger’s tracks!