Dave Tapsell
Overland Buses (xxiv)
40 km from the Chinese border, Nepal: October 1975
One evening in Kathmandu, we were in the bar of one of the hotels when a local man asked if we'd be interested in taking some tourists, in one of the buses, for an early-morning trip to see a Himalayan sunrise. It turned out that there was a group of Europeans staying in Kathmandu that night only and he'd promised some of them a 'trip to remember', on the following day. Apparently, these people were on a Round-the-World-in-Seven-Days package deal – and, obviously the local man was a travel guide working on commission, and had done this before with tourists. Anyway, a time and price was agreed, on condition they paid, in cash, before we left at five o'clock the next morning. We were going to drive along the old road from Kathmandu up to the Chinese (Tibetan) border, there were several places on that road to witness the sunrise over the Himalayas.
At five o'clock sharp the next morning, the new passengers were waiting outside their hotel – all fifteen of them. A few seemed to be not fully awake yet, but they were there in body. The first few miles up the old dirt road was easy but gradually it deteriorated to not much more than a mountain track – it soon became clear why the large bus wouldn't have got far. We were climbing all the time, the road often running alongside the rapidly flowing Bhote Koshi River, which eventually joins the Ganges. This was the time of year following the monsoon season so there had been numerous landslide and rockfalls onto the road, sometimes we were able to get round them but there were occasions when we had to wait for an ancient bulldozer to clear a path through all the mud and rocks. When we got to the place our guide recommended for a sunrise viewpoint the cloud had come down and we didn't see the sun until a few hours later.
We continued up the road as far as we could go – that was the Friendship Bridge at Kodari. The bridge was the border crossing point from Nepal to Tibet, and it had been closed for many years, ever since the Chinese had invaded Tibet. We were forbidden from using cameras by Nepalese soldiers so I was unable to photograph the bridge – or all the Chinese soldiers on the other side of the Bhote Koshi River. I had originally co-driven this bus from Ostend to Istanbul, where the owner asked me to take over the larger, 45-seater bus for the remainder of the trip to India, and then Nepal.
Overland Buses (xxiv)
40 km from the Chinese border, Nepal: October 1975
One evening in Kathmandu, we were in the bar of one of the hotels when a local man asked if we'd be interested in taking some tourists, in one of the buses, for an early-morning trip to see a Himalayan sunrise. It turned out that there was a group of Europeans staying in Kathmandu that night only and he'd promised some of them a 'trip to remember', on the following day. Apparently, these people were on a Round-the-World-in-Seven-Days package deal – and, obviously the local man was a travel guide working on commission, and had done this before with tourists. Anyway, a time and price was agreed, on condition they paid, in cash, before we left at five o'clock the next morning. We were going to drive along the old road from Kathmandu up to the Chinese (Tibetan) border, there were several places on that road to witness the sunrise over the Himalayas.
At five o'clock sharp the next morning, the new passengers were waiting outside their hotel – all fifteen of them. A few seemed to be not fully awake yet, but they were there in body. The first few miles up the old dirt road was easy but gradually it deteriorated to not much more than a mountain track – it soon became clear why the large bus wouldn't have got far. We were climbing all the time, the road often running alongside the rapidly flowing Bhote Koshi River, which eventually joins the Ganges. This was the time of year following the monsoon season so there had been numerous landslide and rockfalls onto the road, sometimes we were able to get round them but there were occasions when we had to wait for an ancient bulldozer to clear a path through all the mud and rocks. When we got to the place our guide recommended for a sunrise viewpoint the cloud had come down and we didn't see the sun until a few hours later.
We continued up the road as far as we could go – that was the Friendship Bridge at Kodari. The bridge was the border crossing point from Nepal to Tibet, and it had been closed for many years, ever since the Chinese had invaded Tibet. We were forbidden from using cameras by Nepalese soldiers so I was unable to photograph the bridge – or all the Chinese soldiers on the other side of the Bhote Koshi River. I had originally co-driven this bus from Ostend to Istanbul, where the owner asked me to take over the larger, 45-seater bus for the remainder of the trip to India, and then Nepal.