Cycling continues

There is only one road leaving the Kathmandu valley in western direction so we had to cope with heavy traffic on this narrow road without a shoulder. The colorful painted trucks labeled with 'Road King', 'Risky Rider' or 'Street Killer' are followed by ramshackle buses labeled with 'VIP', 'Super Deluxe' or 'Tourist Only' in the hierarchy. The law of the street is the low of the strongest.
And no matter how old and in which condition these vehicles are, they are usually fully packed. Tourists tend to use microbusses, whose drivers overtake even more careless. Overturned buses or trucks plunging into ruin are not uncommon.

Luckily, there are only trucks, buses, motorbikes and very few private cars. What would happen if the Nepalese start having their own cars? Indeterminable..

And luckily, we chose a quiet side road south into the Terai then. We could even camp for the first time in Nepal! High up in the mountains and with some visitors (great Nepalese kids, always playing outside and excited to see people like us). Followed by the heaviest thunderstorm we’ve ever experienced. The ground was shaking and our tent was lit up for hours. But it kept us dry. What a scary night! The scariest we recall...

The next day, we reached a view tower in Daman at 2321m. We stayed there overnight but again we couldn’t see the Himalaya - and again there was a heavy thunderstorm, still in the morning. We’re still used to Omani sunshine, damn!

After a second breakfast at the pass (2488m), the downhill run (2000m down into the Terai) was stunning. The vegetation changed rapidly, from pine forest to a tropical forest, to broad-leaved forest (back in autumn), to rice paddies in the fertile valley.Read more