Dave Tapsell
Overland Buses (xxv)
40 km from the Chinese border, Nepal: October 1975
The only remaining passenger to have travelled on the smaller bus since she boarded it at Istanbul, was Pam; she is seen here photographing Ab, the Dutch owner of the two buses, driving his smaller vehicle through water on the road from Kathmandu to the Friendship Bridge at Kodari (altitude over 6,600'). In 1975 the bridge over the Bhote Kosi River was the closed border crossing between Nepal and Tibet – which had been occupied by the Chinese for many years. The road was little more than a single-lane dirt track; the only traffic using it went no further than the frontier town of Kodari – nothing was crossing the bridge in either direction – or had done for a long time. When we drove the seventy-odd miles from Kathmandu, up the road to the border, the round trip took about fourteen hours. There had been frequent post-monsoon rockfalls and landslides onto the road which we had to wait for to be cleared by bulldozers before we could drive on. Some of the boulders that came down were the size of a car. In more recent years the Nepal-China border has re-opened and the road has been significantly upgraded and is now known as the Araniko Highway.
I still have copies of the passenger list for this trip, which left London on 8th September 1975, and many other trips operated by Budget Bus (including Tour East).
Overland Buses (xxv)
40 km from the Chinese border, Nepal: October 1975
The only remaining passenger to have travelled on the smaller bus since she boarded it at Istanbul, was Pam; she is seen here photographing Ab, the Dutch owner of the two buses, driving his smaller vehicle through water on the road from Kathmandu to the Friendship Bridge at Kodari (altitude over 6,600'). In 1975 the bridge over the Bhote Kosi River was the closed border crossing between Nepal and Tibet – which had been occupied by the Chinese for many years. The road was little more than a single-lane dirt track; the only traffic using it went no further than the frontier town of Kodari – nothing was crossing the bridge in either direction – or had done for a long time. When we drove the seventy-odd miles from Kathmandu, up the road to the border, the round trip took about fourteen hours. There had been frequent post-monsoon rockfalls and landslides onto the road which we had to wait for to be cleared by bulldozers before we could drive on. Some of the boulders that came down were the size of a car. In more recent years the Nepal-China border has re-opened and the road has been significantly upgraded and is now known as the Araniko Highway.
I still have copies of the passenger list for this trip, which left London on 8th September 1975, and many other trips operated by Budget Bus (including Tour East).