Crossing from Nepal to Tibet
Trip Start
Apr 26, 2010
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83
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Trip End
Nov 16, 2010
Zhangmu, Tibet, China
Thursday, July 15, 2010
As we drove on towards the border the road continued to rise along the valley walls, and occasionally the river would almost rise to meet us through some barely visible waterfalls, mostly hidden by trees. We had heavy forest all around us for the whole drive, and occasionally crossed the river over thick concrete bridges, passing through what looked like mostly poor villages, although a few had surprisingly modern looking apartment blocks beside the road.
The valley walls stayed very steep around us, and we eventually pulled into the Nepalese border town of Kodari, a one road affair lining the valley wall up to the customs zone. We all piled out of the truck and into the immigration office to be stamped out of Nepal, even though we were still technically outside the border area and could have turned around and gone back into the country.
The actual border between Chinese Tibet and Nepal runs along the centre of the river that we had been following up for the past few hours, and after passing through the customs zone we drove onto the 'Friendship Bridge' and pulled up in front of the red tile line which marks the actual border, where a Chinese border guard flicked through a couple of pages of each passport, I assume simply to verify they were real, since he wasn’t looking at the information pages etc.
From there we walked past 2 ceremonial guards facing each other inside a large gateway, then around the corner where we waited for most of an hour for no real apparent reason before the truck came around the same corner and we had to unload all our gear. Eventually we were able to queue up, in number order (all our passports now had a number sticker on the outside, and we are that number for the next 6 weeks) for a bag inspection. From what we had been told we were just about expecting rubber glove treatment, but the checks were somewhat perfunctory, although a few people did get closely examined.
Once we made it to the immigration desk our passports were inspected and compared back to a database, with a few of us, me included, referred to another more senior guard for a second check. From what I could see on the computer screen it was because my first name was similar to someone else’s, and I’m guessing they weren’t welcome in the country for some reason. After being passed through, with no border stamp for some reason, we had our bags scanned, airport security style, and finally we were in Tibet.
We had to wait a few more hours for the truck to get through inspection, and it became quite hot, but we found a little Chinese diner around the corner and enjoyed steamed dumplings for 1 GBP, but we eventually got away at about 3pm, after losing 2 ¼ hours through the time-zone change and spending hours at the border.
The road up the mountain from the border point to the town of Zhangmu consists of a dirt road with switchbacks up the valley wall, and it wasn’t a great drive for the final half an hour up to the town, bouncing over potholes and piles of dirt and rocks on the road, but even then Adele and I managed to nod off to sleep for a few minutes, which we later found out was against truck rules if sitting in the front seat. (Impressive that there are still truck rules which no one has bothered to mention to us even after several months on the truck).
The truck was forced to stop at yet another customs checkpoint, but we were all allowed out and to continue up the hill to the Gang Gyen Hotel beside the road, where Adele and I were assigned a room with Norrie, Edna, Adam and Jen. No ensuite bathrooms, just squattties down the end of the hall. No hot showers, for those we needed to go to the public sauna across the road and pay 10 yuan. But we did each get a cup of jasmine tea and a thermos of hot water!
I spent much of the rest of the afternoon writing up the past month in my journal, which is a great way to kill some time as the afternoon disappeared on me, and it was suddenly 7.15pm and time to go down to the buffet arranged for us. At 45 yuan a head (about 4.5 GBP) it was quite expensive by Tibetan standards, and the food wasn’t worth writing about, but as it was unlimited we all ate as much as we could. We were all quite quickly asleep not long after.
