We finally have left from Kathmandu.  We’re on our way to the Tibetian border.  Our irreliable travel agency gave us, at the last minute, our visum for China.  This visum is no more than a white piece of paper with some Chinese signs on it.  According to the travel agency, our names and duration of our stay in China are mentioned on it.  To us, it could be a any kitchen recipe !! At the border we will find out whether the travel agency has been lying to us or not.  We are cycling in the pouring rain to Tibet.  The monsoon has started and we really have to dig into the mud.  We pass small villages where, to our opinion, no one has set foot for centuries !  Nude children play in the mud, farmers dig in the water to cultivate rice.  Others sit still under an umbrella in front of their houses. This is the area of the Newar-tribes.  Their traditional rites are very special.  When we arrived in the rain in a small village, we heard music and singing coming out of one of the houses. We looked into this house and were immediately invited in.  The whole family stood around a dying man.  Children constantly threw flowers over his head while the others sang to “guide the dying man to his next life”. Meanwhile, people were busy preparing the funeral pile for his cremation.

At this very moment we are unable to move on.  Our road simply has gone !  Parts of a wood have glide over our road.  It will take awhile before this mess will be removed because bulldozers have to come a very long way.  After weeks of  being captured in Kathmandu, we are now stuck in Nepal.  Stuck in a small, humid hotel where the electricity fails every minute.  This is not our idea of a ‘cozy’ stay !  We’re very impatient because next week we have to give ourselves up at the Tibetian border !!