Last days in Nepal:
Swayambhunath (The monkey temple)
Back at Kathmandu we finalized our trip to Tibet. There was some confusion. The normal tour is a roundtrip from Kathmandu. Since we weren’t planning on coming back to Kathmandu, we needed to find a way to get to Chengdu, China. Javier had read about the highest train in the world that goes from Tibet to Chengdu. We were interested. We talked to Rom about it before we left. He told us that the ride was 36 hours. The train had private rooms with toilets and showers, restaurants, and supplemental oxygen. We thought…we can do 36 hours. He said he would take care of everything for us. The tickets were quite expensive. Basically, once we arrived in Lhasa, someone needed to drive to the train station (2 hours one way), pick up the tickets and bring them back to us. Just the 5 hour round-trip journey was costing us $100 USD each. We hadn’t done much research on this before we left, but he ensured us that this was cheaper than flying, so we told him to go ahead. When we returned from EBC, we looked into it a little more. Long story short, we were not given correct information. The ride is around 56 hours, and the flight was about half of the train ticket. We were upset and went back to Rom. The whole thing was our fault. We should have done the research on our own. Rom was very understanding, but since he was a third party, he said that the Tibet side was going to charge a fee. They hadn’t purchased the ticket yet, but still wanted to charge us 15%. Javier said no, mind you, we have already paid the money. The Tibet side changed it to 10%, and Rom himself paid 5% to keep us happy. We were all set to leave for Tibet the following day. We didn’t have our passports yet, but Rom told us to return that evening around 6pm to collect them.
Swayambhunath (The monkey temple)
We told Rom that we would be spending the rest of the day at a cafe to buy our flight and plan out the next stages of our trip. We booked our flight to Chengdu, took care of some other business, and felt pretty accomplished. As we were sitting at the cafe, Rom and his son spot us and quickly walk over. At this point, it’s been about 2 hrs since we last left him. He told us that no sooner than we left, he received a phone call from the Chinese embassy in Kathmandu telling us that our visas would not be ready on time. We would be leaving a day later. He tried our guesthouse as soon as he found out to tell us to push our flight back by one day. He sent his brother out to look for us, while he and his son checked all of the cafes. He was running around on foot looking for us…
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Swayambhunath (The monkey temple)
We told him it was too late; we had just minutes before purchased our tickets. He asked us to try and change it, if not, no worries, it would be okay. We tried in vain to change our ticket. When we went back to his office later that evening, he said that he had contacted his Tibet counterpart and they were altering our itinerary to make up for the lost day. Basically, we would lose our last free day in Lhasa. No big deal. He also told us that we were very lucky. There was supposed to be a van with 6 of us- 2 Canadians, 1 German, and an Australian, and of course, us. Out of the 6, only Javier and I were granted visas. We asked him why, and he just shrugged and said, “China.” Enough said. As he handed us our passports, visa, and Tibet permit, he had the other passport on his desk. He said the other 4 wanted to apply (and pay) again. The way this process works is this: you have to apply to China for two things- permission to enter Tibet and a Chinese visa, even if you’re only going to Tibet. The two are separate, and each have the amount of time you are allowed in each territory. As foreigners, we can only be in Tibet with an organized tour. The tour is sent a group visa, with the names and numbers of everyone on that tour. Once inside Tibet, you don’t have to stay with the tour, but you have to be out by the indicated date. We were only granted a 15-day Chinese visa. Including the 7 days in Tibet. This really put a damper on our China plans. Rom had requested a 28 day visa, and told us that it was normal for China to issue a visa for this long when applying for permission to enter Tibet. For some reason, we didn’t get it, so we had to reroute and cut out some very cool and highly anticipated hiking in southern China. We asked Rom what happened? Again, he just smiled, shrugged, and said, “China.”
Swayambhunath (The monkey temple)
We spent our extra day visiting the monkey temple. We walked there, which meant about an hours walk through the mean street of Kathmandu. We ran into Rom on our way! The monkey temple wasn’t that interesting. Javier and I aren’t big fans of monkeys. We find them unnecessarily aggressive and menacing. Thankfully, they didn’t bother us too much and we were able to observe the temple’s busy crowds. We didn’t do much for the rest of the day-except eat at OR2K. 🙂 We were both done with Kathmandu, and ready to leave.
Swayambhunath (The monkey temple)
On the morning of our departure to Tibet, we were ready and waiting at our given time- 4:30am. About 30 minutes later there was a knock on the guesthouse door. When Javier cracked the door open and peered out into the darkness, there was no greeting, no smiles, just a quick, “You go to Tibet?” And thus starts our Tibetan journey.
To see more pictures of the Monkey Temple and Kathmandu, click HERE.