Day 83 Thursday 23 November, Janakpur to Kathmandu, Nepal
Hasty breakfast and rapid not too soon departure from hotel grot. It’s foggy and we decide with little prompting to forego the sights of Janakpur, extolled by LP as a very ‘Indian experience’ but definitely not one of the highlights of the trip. Avoiding the collapsed bridge (see early entry) we reach the highway and reasonable roads and head west, this time taking the longer but apparently quicker route up to Kathmandu.
We reach the city at sunset and this time its I1’s turn to run the gauntlet of the Kathmandu ring road in rush-hour. Eventually, exhausted from 9hrs straight driving we get to the hotel where we are welcomed by all the staff as long lost friends. It’s a strange state of affairs when a hotel in Kathmandu feels like home but it's a tremendous relief to be back here, with a warm room and comfortable bed. We quickly revive and go for pizzas and red wine at the nearby Rum doodle restaurant, feeling almost like the Everest conquerors whose signatures and portraits adorn the walls. We think that all those smug trekkers congratulating themselves about having completed the Annapurna circuit or reached Everest base camp should just try driving to Sikkim and back. And we still have both wing mirrors, although there are a large number of Indians and a quite a few nepalis nursing sore arms or heads, depending on their size.
Weather 19C Foggy
Distance today: 400km
Distance from start: 15,974km
We reach the city at sunset and this time its I1’s turn to run the gauntlet of the Kathmandu ring road in rush-hour. Eventually, exhausted from 9hrs straight driving we get to the hotel where we are welcomed by all the staff as long lost friends. It’s a strange state of affairs when a hotel in Kathmandu feels like home but it's a tremendous relief to be back here, with a warm room and comfortable bed. We quickly revive and go for pizzas and red wine at the nearby Rum doodle restaurant, feeling almost like the Everest conquerors whose signatures and portraits adorn the walls. We think that all those smug trekkers congratulating themselves about having completed the Annapurna circuit or reached Everest base camp should just try driving to Sikkim and back. And we still have both wing mirrors, although there are a large number of Indians and a quite a few nepalis nursing sore arms or heads, depending on their size.
Weather 19C Foggy
Distance today: 400km
Distance from start: 15,974km
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