The past few days we spent hours at the Nepalese customs. It led to a bizar but funny situation.
Our mountainbikes have arrived. Gosh ! What thick tires they have. But we are going to need it because we will have to ride on roads with loose stones. We had to pick them up ourselves… We had to show them some newspaper articles to prove that we really are tourists and that we have no intention whatsoever to sell our bikes here in Nepal.
A few days later we went back to the customs. We wanted to send our bikes, back to Belgium. Again, we had to prove that we are the owners of these bikes. Afterwards, our bikes were wrapped in carton. Some ten men were busy with our bikes. Suddenly there was this strange noise coming from one of the bikes. It was like a siren and when on top a light started flashing, the men paniced.
Because of the civil war that is going on in Nepal, officials and soldiers are quite nervous. They thought immediately of a bomb !! Heavy armed soldiers came in and threw the bike out. We didn’t get the chance to explain what was going on ! No bomb, no bomb, we shouted !!! The alarm simply had gone off… we had bought this alarm in India so that we would be noticed, seen and heard in the chaotic traffic. We had forgotten to take the battery out and while wrapping our bikes, it went off by accident.
Meanwhile we booked a trip with an unreliable travel agency. We had no other choice because reliable travel agencies refused to sell us a 3-month trip.
So, officially we will cycle 18 days to Lhasa, capital of Tibet. We have to follow a detailed route. Chinese authorities will always know where we are. Between Lhasa and the Chinese border there’s a military zone and people told us it is an impossible job to pass this zone. So therefore, we have decided to do it unofficial. We could book a ‘real’ trip but that would have cost us some 150 dollars a day !! So that is why we bought an eighteen day trip to Lhasa. According to the schedule, on June 11, we pass the border between Nepal and Tibet.