Annapurna Circuit, Getting there

Getting to Kathmandu is quite a feat in itself.   It is easy to look at the continent of Asia and see that China goes from the pacific ocean to India and wraps to the north of Nepal having consumed Tibet and forget how darn big those countries are.

 This view of the Himalayas just prior to landing in Kathmandu is complimentary of continental plates clashing and pushing up over several hundred million years bringing marine depositional earth, full of history and fossils, up to some of the highest places on the Planet.

China is the fourth largest country (Russia, Canada, USA) covering 6.4% of the total land area of Earth.  All in all, it's a very efficient use of space given that they have 15% of the population.

China Railway map.  Maps of China are a bit hard to find and I had no luck finding apps or maps I could used on my I-phone.  I ended up doing Google image searches for maps and saved ones like this one using an app called GoodReader so I could view them off line.

Getting from Xiamen, China to Kathmandu, Nepal

dbBrad testing his Green Giant boots in the Airport!!

There are some interesting issues to solve when traveling in China.  One is that as an individual person I can't get a Visa to travel in Tibet yet to travel to Hong Kong I don't need a visa.  Yessi, being Chinese  had a different problem as she needed a Visa to travel to Hong Kong.  We had hoped to take the train across the country to Kathmandu but that can only be done from Shanghai to the north and requires going through Tibet, which would require Visa for me.  Additionally, we needed to arrive at one of the entry/exit points where you can be issued a Visa on the spot and where we could obtain the trekking permits we needed.  Kathmandu was the spot and anyone approaching Nepal for Trekking will want to arrive via Kathmandu.

Our day went like this--

Yessi Ye modeling her new hiker look available at
TuTwo Stores in southern China

• Rush shopping for a few of our last needed Items.  Thank goodness one of the stops was TuTwo, one of the better outdoor adventure shops in China. 
• Get a ride to the Train Station, the same train station I threw up in only a week previous, to catch a 5:00 train
• Arrive Guang Zhou at 7:00, 1 hr. layover
• Catch overnight train to Shen Zhen, the main entrance between China and Hong Kong.  Arrive 8am, 11hrs later.
• Customs and walk across river into Hong Kong.  Due to Yessi being Chinese and me being American, we had different lines to go through.  Yessi was sent back becasue of Visa issue but somehow got in front of me so I waited for an hour, as did she for me.     Finally we found each other only about 2 minutes walk from each other, and then off to the MRT
• MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) from Hong Kong to Sheung Shui where we could catch a bus.
• Catch bus to airport, arrive airport terminal 2 about 1.5 hours later.
• Catch flight from Hong Kong to Mumbai, 7 hours on plane, arrive around midnight.
• Layover Mumbai, 8 hours in the most getto-like airport I've ever been in.  Yuck!!
• Catch 8am flight to Kathmandu.
• Arrive Kathmandu 6 hours later.
• Immigration, Visa, luggage and customs, roughly 1hr.  Nepal's laid back atmosphere was actually the most pleasant of all the international airports i've had to deal with.
• Catch taxi to Buddha Garden in Thamel district, Jyath, Kathmandu, a half an hour ride through narrow bumpy streets and so many motorcycles it felt like Sturgis in SD!!
• Eat!!  TOTAL TRAVEL TIME 43 HOURS

Kathmandu to Besishahar

Yessi and Brad at Buddha Garden in Kathmandu, early December 2012.  70 degrees!

It takes a day minimum to be in Kathmandu before anything even begins to make sense.  Maps are far and few between, the streets are unmarked and complicated, the shops begin to look identical and the streets are flat out dangerous to shoppers who aren't paying attention to the cars, trucks and motorcycles.  Even finding a CashMachine can be tough and chances are pretty good it won't work for your card, is out of money, or is broken!!  If I had it to do again, I'd take several days in Kathmandu to explore the historic elements of the city, the temples, other districts and to do a better job finding local food.  Once you're ready, find a bus.  

Yessi and I headed from Kathmandu to Pokhara with our necessary permits to hike the Annapurna Circuit.

Our bus was a tourist bus (next time I will take only local buses as they work great, are cheap, and are really a lot of fun).   But purchasing a ticket from a hotel and getting delivered to the correct bus stop was worth the extra money.  Even so, there are no 'bus stops' only streets with busses which all seem to be leaving at the same time.  Many busses around Nepal seem to leave around 7am for the longer trips as did ours from Kathmandu to Pokhara.

It's hard to read numbers or letters in Nepalese, a Tibeto-Burman language, since they have their own alphabet called Sanskrit.  This 'tourist bus' was a bit easier to find with it's clean windows, fresh paint, lack of ornamentation and the 18" tall letters spelling TOURIST!!

After 6 hours on a bumpy bus, we got off prior to Pokhara, where the roads fork at a town, on no map I had, called Kumbra.  From here we needed a ride to Besishahar.  It was now 2 pm and we really wanted to get hiking and away from the masses, so we let ourselves get hustled into a private taxi where we ended up giving our money to the wrong people and had to somehow pay twice, but we got there in just under an hour.

Photo taken from our taxi back seat on the way to Besishahar!  Even our taxi driver had to stop several times and ask to make sure he was on the right road. We had no idea where we were going, but he got us to a town, the correct town, safe and sound!

This was now my second time getting hustled and I decided I was getting pretty good at it!  We adopted a rule to never go with the first person, the first inn, the first bus, or the first restaurant   We learned to slow down, get our bearings, take a breath, and then how to make our own decisions.   The reality is, if you ask someone for something it is very likely they will take care of you.