Xinjiang, China’s Central Asia and incredible Tibet – Day 28

Day 28:

The interesting thing in Zhangmu was the 2 hours 15 mins time difference between China and Nepal and Nepal Immigration starts working at 8.00 local time which means 10.15 in China. So when you are exiting Tibet, you shouldn’t reach very early, the later is better while you are entering from Nepal, it’s other way round, earlier is better as if Chinese immigration gets closed at 5.00 local time in evening (In Nepal it’s just 2.45pm) you might get stuck at border and loose a day. From Zhangmu town it’s 9 km straight down hill to Chinese Immigration and Customs which is parked right next to friendship bridge.The bridge is the real border crossing as the Koshi river demarcate the border, one half of the bridge belongs to Nepal and other half to China, exactly here we switched the road side as well, after one month of right hand drive in China we were brought back to Indian/Nepalese system of left hand drive. Nepal side immigration was as usual very messy and somehow we had to pay few hundred rupees to the touts to get our passport stamped though officially Indians don’t need any visa to visit Nepal. From Nepal border Woeser arranged a Jeep for us to drop till Kathmandu which was definitely a plus and very few Tibetan operators provide this service as part of package without extra cost. The 120 km road from Kodari border to Kathmandu was most pathetic in entire trip as we started getting touch with Indian infrastructure with potholed and broken roads. We were back to reality when it took 4 hours to cross this 120 km, which in whole of China we crossed in 1 to 1.5 hours max. We took a hotel in Thamel area of Kathmandu and started getting acclimatized with unclean toilets, dusts, pollution and heat of Kathmandu, yes we were close to Indian Plains

Just crossing the Friendship Bridge in Nepal side you would find some nice Waterfalls, the flow is quite heavy even in late October:

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Koshi River known as sorrow of Bihar entering into Nepal from Tibet here and subsequently flow to India to become a tributary of the Ganges river system:

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The green is mind boggling after spending one month in World’s one of the highest and driest region:

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Change of scenery in Nepal is amazing:

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This cute Nepalese girl was initially camera shy but later gave some nice poses for me:

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Amazing Valley in Nepal:

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Picturesque Nepal:

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That’s Kathmandu, at last we reached:

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Thanks to Lord Shiva, we finally made it, this is a big one before entering Kathmandu:

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Next: Day 29