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by Nick

We arrived at the Chinese – Nepalese border with hordes of other tourists and once the Chinese immigration showed up it wasn’t long before we were crossing the no mans land into Nepal.

Before we could enter it was neccessary for us to purchase either a two week or 30 day visa on arrival at the chaotic immigration office. After pushing and shoving our way to the front with our forms filled out. The fees were quickly paid and our passports were moved on to another man stamping in the visas. Some more pushing and shoving ensued and I spotted our passports on another attendants desk and leaned over and grabbed ours from the pile.

Once outside I checked to make sure our visas were issued and we went on our way to find a way to Kathmandu. We eventually found a bus driver to take us to Kathmandu for a descent fare but would have to wait until 1030 and it was only 830. Close to noon the bus pulled out and we were on our 6hr journey to Kathmandu.

It wasn’t until the next day I noticed our visas were not the 30 day visas we had paid for and were only good for 15 days. We were pissed! So off to Nepali Immigration we went to try our best to resolve the issue without very high hopes.

We talked to about 4 people behind desks, being passed from one person to the next before we reached what appeared to be the head guy. He continued to tell us that it was our fault for not checking the Visas right after they were issued and asked to see our recipt of which we weren’t given.

We continued with our explanation and our friend Martin was there to back us up even though his visa was correct. Some phone calls were made and the officers mistake was finally identified but due to Nepali red tape he could not resolve the problem by simply issuing new visas and inorder to get the 30 days we would have to pay to have them extended but he would get us our money back that we had paid the day before. We were told to come back the following day to recieve our 30 dollars.

We thought long and hard about extending our visas but instead of paying more than we had anticipated (30USD) we decided to take this opportunity to sort of go with flow and reroute ourselves southward to India after our Nepal visas expire.

Due to the fact that the Indian Embassy is extremely busy in Kathmandu we enlisted the help of a local agency to aid us in obtaining our visas so this morning we showed up at opening time and passed the people waiting for hours with the help of a quick bribe and accomplished the first step to obtaining a visa. We are now free to travel about in Nepal (with a photocopied passport) to Chitwan National Park to search for rhinos and tigers while are visas are being processed and hopefully with a little bribing it will take less than a week.

When we returned to Nepali Immigration this afternoon, the man we had spoken to was busy in a meeting but we eventually found someone who recognized us from the day before. They informed us to return on Sunday at 1030pm as our money would be in no later.

Our last two days have been taking care of some housework, (ie laundry,stocking up on toiletries, laxatives for Lianna) so hopefully in the next few days we will see some of the many sights in and around Kathmandu.