oliabroad :: Oli on his way from Munich to Hong Kong

Go to:

2010-06-04
News:
New Zealand

Finally the pix are online! :-)

news archive...

Diary - 2008 October (Nepal)

2008-10-29 to 2008-10-31

Bodh Gaya

The holy Bodh Gaya - the place where Buddha found enlightment! I get a new shock: This village - or whatever that is - is gross. Unbelievable gross, ugly, dirty. It's the place where His Holiness the Dalai Lama is coming every fall - he really must not feel any pain! I wouldn't come back to this dirt hole when they pay me for!

The garden with the Bodhi Tree - the tree Buddha sit below when he found enlightment - is, for god's sake, wonderful!

I find a place to eat where the food is very good and cheap which makes me feel better, too. I will eat there the next three days twice.

Day one I meet a young nice monk who also shows me around and tells me about Buddhism, his duties, his future and his family which is all very interesting. It's a hard life - I don't wanna change. He shows me his flat, where he lives with his grandfather and brother who are also monks - the flat, or the room with one bed, is about 10 square meters big! The shower is somewhere in the garden. But he is in a good mood. I know why when I drive with him to his small village where he comes from - the poorest place on earth I ever saw - except slums. As he became a monk, he gets money to afford school and an Eglish course, so he can talk to foreigners and can so earn some money - what is illegal for a monk, but hey, we all gotta live! :-)

Next day I join him for his English class where they force me to hold a one hour lesson for them - maybe they didn't get, that I am neither a native speaker nor a teacher. Well, to make conversation I choose the Earth as a topic and quickly realize that they have no clue about what is the different between a country and a continent, how far is Europe, how do the US look like - just nothing. They haven't seen a world map in their life! But in the end they have no fear anymore, speak open and we have a good time! It was a hardwarming experience - when they have the chance to learn, they have fun in doing so! It would be so easy to change things here. Why the government is not installing public schools will keep a miracle for me.

I spend three days with the young monk, pay for the meals and we exchange the views of the world we have - what a difference!

2008-10-27 to 2008-10-29

Hard core drive from Kathmandu to Bodh Gaya

As I am quite in a hurry and have to drive several hundreds of kilometres I start early in the morning - 5 o' clock I start the engine - still in the dark.

It's the first time that I can see everything - telling the workshop I want the snow melting in front of me when I switch on my new light system worked! I see everything!

After one hour - I drove quite far by this time already, because of no traffic - I do hear a strange sound from the back. I keep going for some minutes but then decide, I have to check the outside of my car. Which was good. My rear left wheel is just fixed with one nut and not attached to the axle properly anymore. You cannot trust any workshop on this planet! How can I forget to fix the nuts after changing a tyre!?

Well, it's 6 o' clock in the morning. What shall I do. I have three spare nuts. One is missing. Question is if they didn't fix the nuts at all or just by hand and I lost them on the way. If the latter, there is no sense of driving back at all. If they are still in the workshop I would have to wait until 10 o' clock in the morning and waste a lot of time. I decide to keep going - if they are still in the workshop, they can send me the nuts down to Goa - which is not a very good idea, how I would know later! I keep going very well but after 13 hours of driving I decide to look for a place to stay overnight. I find the perfect one, think already of doing my training programme when a police squad arrives. Very unfriendly they wanna search my car and ask what I am doing here. Well they tell me it's a very dangerous area and I cannot stay here. When finally leaving - of course - they ask for money! I start of thinking to ask every Indian I would see back home in Germany for money! :-)

I am tried and just want to find a place to sleep - but as vast India is, there is no place! If there is no lake, river, mud or forest - there are people! You are never alone! So I keep going. Near Patna I have to find a street to the south - without proper signs not the easiest task. So I start the worst thing you can do in India - I start asking Indians for directions. They hardly speak English. And they have the same culture as the Thais: Lying is better than telling you not to know something. So in case they don't know the way - which is the case in 80% - they tell you anything.

Knowing this and knowing that at this point it's quite important to find the right street because otherwise I will drive a 200 km detour because of rivers you cannot cross, I ask 5 different people. They all tell me something I hardly can believe, but hey 5 persons - they must be right - there is always a little bit of hope that they don't lie again.

Well, it came as it had to come - they all told me the wrong way and I drove into the pampas. The streets gets narrower and narrower, the surface worse, but I decide to keep going. Sometimes I can just drive 20 km/h. Still no place to stop the car and sleep. It's pitch dark. A car approaches me and does not give way at all. I keep going and thing this crazy man will give way the sooner or the later. But he does not! I realize in the last second that he is on a single lane bridge and I nearly crash into him. It's definitely time to find a place to sleep - but there is none!

After another hour I am lucky and find a place where I stop my car and fall asleep instantly - after 19 hours driving non stop!

Next day I drive on and realize that the place was the last possibility for the next 45 km, which means two hours drive - I wouldn't have managed this.

I drive on and decide at a nice place to take a shower - no matters how much traffic there is. The cars driving by do not matter but a man comes along and stops next to me and takes a position 3 meters next to me and watches me the next half an hour how a white man takes a shower, shaves his self and cuts his nails - sometimes he approaches to less than a meter! Just gaffing without moving or saying anything! Unbelievable! :-) Welcome to India!

An hour later I am in Bodh Gaya - about two days earlier than I thought! How good is that!

2008-10-24 to 2008-10-27

The last days in Kathmandu

The workshop made a good job in building in a small cupboard into my car and installing some sockets and fans and doing the usual service.

On the 26th Liverpool played Chelsea in the Premier League and stopped with a 1:0 a series of unbeaten Chelsea at home after more than four years! Watching the game I met Owen, his sister and Kirin again - the world is so small - what ended in another party night.

Next day I still have to organize some things and it becomes late when I arrive in the workshop. Of course I have to argument when it comes to the bill and delete several lines - they all try to make money! :-)

At least I can stay at the workshop and sleep in my car to be able to start very early next day.

2008-10-22 to 2008-10-24

Kayak course

Lindsey brought in Sandra from the States who was not only the owner of a SPA so she was gently giving free massages, she was also super clever and funny and therefore a new highlight in producing fun. Mads brought his friend Jonas (also from Denmark) and Ed from Ireland joint the group so that we were about six people challenging the Eskimo roll. Well, we were, because as time went by and our teacher was not the best, Sandra skipped the first day, Mads the second and me the third day. Not stopping us from having a lot of fun in the evening making party on the beach...

As I had to sort things out around my car and passport anyway I said good-bye one day earlier than planned and went on the roof top of a local bus back to Kathmandu.

2008-10-13 to 2008-10-18

Anna Purna Basecamp Trek

Without any alternatives it was an easy game for Netty and Mike to persuade me to join in for the Anna Purna Base camp (ABC) Trek. Mike helped me to organize my trekking permit and at about 2.30pm we started our trek.

First I though I would join them for two days and then try to descend again with my broken knees. But lucky me with many breaks (we always had breakfast after walking for an hour) I just felt my right knee sometimes, but not in a way I got totally scared. As Mike who worked back home in mountain rescue pushed us through, a dream came true and we managed to reach the ABC on day 4 midday and decent the whole 5000m on day six before 2 pm what makes it 5 whole days of trekking, where normally 7 to 10 days are scheduled. Yeah!! Life can go on like this! :-)

Of course we were early enough back in Pokhara for joining the happy hour! :-)

Meanwhile Lindsey showed up in Pokhara and meeting Owen and Kirin again we had quite some more fun... :-)

2008-10-08 to 2008-10-13

Passport problems

Next morning I got a shock by the fact, that I have lost my passport! What a disaster - the first time on my trip that I lost something! Chances were that my passport is with Mike and Anne Christine because I borrowed their rucksack once but after days of trying to reach them they just could tell me they don't have it! Shit!

So it's time to contact the honorar consul of Austria in Kathmandu - this was nostalgic, as I had to get a new passport some years ago on Bali and these kind of people are not the most helpful species of the world. And so it was here - this stupid man was not even in charge of cleaning up his email box, so I couldn't reach him at all! I saw myself already skipping everything planned to just organize a new passport - including new visas for Nepal and India - what a mess!!

On day four I received a message from Mike and Anne Christine that they now did find my passport - it was in the rucksack! Lucky me!! :-)

To send it from India to Nepal was another story but the shipping agent of Mike and Anne Christine finally was able to send it ignoring the fact that sending a passport is prohibited.

Meanwhile my landlord kept on screwing me over while organizing a flight to Manang for me. As I cannot trust my knees to hold for a proper hike I wanted to fly into the Anna Purna Circuit and do daytrips there. But therefore I need a rare flight which my landlord told me he could organize. He kept telling me this for four days, already asking for money, for fees, the whole nine yards - just to tell me the very last night before my flight was scheduled that he couldn't organize my ticket! Fuck! Welcome to Asia - they just always lie to you and I still didn't learn this! What a mess!! But changes always bring chances...

2008-10-08 to 2008-10-13

My liver gets scared

The whole life we have to say good-bye, so it was hard to know not to see Mike and Anne Christine for a long time (they are heading to South America now). But the good thing is you can meet up with friends again and so I knew I will meet Mike and Netty (the drinking crew from Varanassi) again in Pokhara! :-)

After a five hour bus drive to Pokhara I was quite lost in a dark and rainy city so I decided to check in into any hotel, check the internet later and move to Mikes and Nettys hotel the next day. But checking on the map where I was exactly showed me, that I was far away from the tourist area and so I used the stupid technique of the locals always saying 'Yes' to everything to leave the hotel without paying and taking a taxi to the tourist area. It took me minutes to check in and get in contact with Uli who joint me for having dinner and introduced me to his friends to have another long party evening... :-)

Party went on with Mike and Netty the next days and on day three in the Moondance bar we were recognized by the bar staff and had not even to order our drinks anymore - playing pool the whole night and ending regularly in the Buzzy Bee Club we had a very good week.

Daytime we had fun renting boats to chill on the lake, walk through the hills to the 'World Peace Pagoda', go white water rafting, ride motorcycles and enjoy the calm, relaxing, chilling lakeside of Pokhara - a place just Tegernsee back home can be compared with! Having late dinners on the boat on the lake combined with night swimming and meeting Kirin and Owen from Ireland were just more events to make this stay special!

2008-10-04 to 2008-10-08

Meeting Anne Christine and Mike again!

What a highlight! Meeting my beloved German couple from Iran again! We had a very nice dinner in a steakhouse where I could eat beef the fist time after about half a year! You have no clue, how good meat can be... :-)

Next day Michael (I met him at the Taj Mahal) joint the group and it didn't take Mike and Anne Christine long to persuade us to join in for a trip to Chitwan National Park. A wildlife where you walk to the jungle, ride elephants to see rhinos and co (the animals don't have fear of elephants, so when you ride on them they don't recognize you!) go playing with elephants in the water and enjoy the perfect atmosphere in a jungle lodge! These were again perfect three days! Thank you Mike and Anne Christine!!

2008-10-01 to 2008-10-04

Getting a glimpse of the beauty of Nepal

Driving into Nepal was such a good change - all the people were so happy, so friendly, so welcoming! And the landscape - although we just had seen such a small part of it by this time - was already amazing! The moment we drove over the fist hills and could see the Himalayan chain of mountains was just overwhelming! We all jumped out of the car, took about a hundreds pictures and were just happy!!

As the sun set it got dark very fast and we were very happy to find a very nice and beautiful guesthouse with the perfect view tower including a nice restaurant. Time to test the Nepali kitchen which was very, very good - just something else than all the curry and saomosas from India! :-)
Mads, Lindsey and I had a very chilly evening having some beers and alike...

Next day was an easy ride to Kathmandu where we were lucky to overtake a traffic jam for about 4 km following an army truck! :-) After check-in fist stop was the legendary Fire and Ice - a Pizza Restaurant where Pizza and Spaghetti are made like in their origin!

The next three days I had breakfast with Karen from the US - we met the first day and spend just the whole time talking none stop, so we decided to go on with that as long as there is time. As we had to split up soon, we decided to join a Yoga course in India together - so in more than a month we should see each other again...


	Start: 2008-04-10					Oli on his way from Munich to Hong Kong				End: 2010-05-12