Crossing Borders

Travel days are some of the most difficult: each step is into the unknown, clean, good food is can be hard to come by, and time and distance imprint themselves onto the mental and physical self. I was looking forward to Nepal, but as I prepared myself to start the journey, I had to convince away the anxieties playing out in my head. It won't be too bad, I thought. As soon as I get on that overnight train, I can rest (and I needed rest because I was newly feverish with a sore throat). I took a taxi to the train station, a few hours beore my midnight train.

I patiently waited, watching and writing. The train station was one of those sights in India that was just unbelievable. The parking lot, jammed full of autorickshaws was literally a field of white dust littered with piles of debris. Directly in front of the train station, men chanted and drummed by a temple there. Sleeping bodies, some resting on blankets or shawls, some directly on the filthy marble, covered the station floor. With the distortion over the loudspeaker announcing all the delays, the neon lights, and the echoes of a thousand voices, I wondered, how can these people sleep in this racket? I think to myself, am I so nuts to do this on my own? I am brave, but India is so different and foreign. Like the holiness of Varanasi: I see the temples and the rituals and I get the gist of Hinduism; but really, I can't know how the Hindus feel, or what the city signifies, it is just too far removed from my conception of the world...

The train was two hours late. In the meantime, I met two Australians who were also heading to Nepal. We agreed to meet in the morning at the destination station in Gorakhpur, to share a taxi. I was happy with this, and hopped onto the train. It's good I was so exhausted and passed directly out, because I had little time to think about the fact that it was the dirtiest train I have ever been on.

On arrival, I spotted Eugene and Richard. Richard is a 'non-conventional' Buddhist monk and Eugene is studying the Tibetan language so that he can study Buddhism in Tibetan (he likens this challenge to an Eskimo moving to France to study philosophy); they both live in Kathmandu. I decided to come along with them to Kushinigar, the site of the Buddha's cremation, before heqding to the border. It was really great to have insightful companions as we wandered around the ruins and then circled the golden reclining Buddha statue. Our taxi driver was a small weasley one-eyed man, who drove maniacally. I contemplated fleeting life as we careened back to Gorakhpur, glancing at the buildings along the road. It looked like it hqd been recently bombed- piles of rubble sat gathering dust, and the buildings were either being destroyed or built, I couldn't tell which.

Luckily we switched drivers for the three plus hour trip to the Nepali border. Richard made sure he drove slower, and the architectural wreckage soon gave way to farmlands and small villages. The road was even lined with trees. When we got a flat tire, I took it in stride. We stepped out of the vehicle qs the driver replaced the flat with a spare. The villagers started to gather round, staring with curiosity at the tall white foreigners. The 'Indian doctor' (more like medicine man) approached with a miling face. He pocketed the beedie I offered him. We smiled, the villagers smiled. I noticed the doctor was blind in one eye. A line from a Tom Waits song kept playing in my head: 'In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.' Eventually, we made it to the border, and right away, the Nepalese people were so much nicer and welcoming.

The border crossing was pretty easy. I trusted the men who seemed helpful a little too much however, when I payed overprice for a 'very good seat' on 'the last bus' to Pokhara. Not only was the bus ride three hours longer than anticipated (making it 12 hours), but it was full of forty goats; yes, forty goats! The whole baggage compartment was stuffed full, they were on top of the bus in a crate, and they were crammed together in the last three rows of seats. Apparently, a man runs goats from India to Pokhara often, selling each one for 4000 or 5000 Nepali rupees (20 or 30 dollars a piece). It was a nightmarish ride as the bus made its way in the cold blackness around the curvy cliff-edge roads, the fearful and squished goats bleating, smelling, and shitting two seats behind me for 12 hours, as I coughed and fevered. By the time I got off in Pokhara, I too smelled of goat, and the thought of goat cheese made me gag. I made it, though, and despite the hell of a journey, I was happy to have arrived in Nepal.