Well, the closest I am going to get anyway.

We arrived in Kathmandu at the smallest international airport I have ever seen. There isn’t an oversized luggage area. The bike boxes dropped onto the conveyor belt on the normal luggage chute, where it was really fucking obvious that they wouldn’t fit through the gap, or onto the luggage carousel. We ran over and wrestled them out of the chute where they were blocking everything and in danger of jamming the conveyor belt. After that we were released into the chaos outside. We negotiated (badly) for transport into the city and the bike boxes and bags were crammed into a little van. There wasn’t enough space for both of us as well, so Richard had to lay on the floor underneath the boxes.

We want to see Nepal of course, but looking ahead there are only two exits from the country by land: Tibet (permits, guides and the expense of those rule that out,) and India. We underestimated the bureaucracy of the Indian Embassy, no mean feat considering we allowed over a week in our plans just to get this visa. We went through an agency because the visa is expensive and the process a faff, so didn’t want to risk ballsing up our application for the sake of saving £10. The agent told us “two weeks, but sometimes more” when we asked how long it would take. The Visa Centre themselves just told us “a long time” when we handed our documents in. There’s not much information about the process, but the next stage is either taking our passports to the Embassy, or attending an interview there. Either way we’ll need to be physically present at the Embassy with a day’s notice. It means we can’t stray too far from Kathmandu until the application is either approved or rejected.

We were happy enough for the first few days just wandering around and eating. The food here is one of the things I’ve looked forward to the most. There’s a scene in the Bodyswap episode of Red Dwarf, when hologram Rimmer has borrowed Lister’s body so he can physically interact with the world. For his first meal he buries his face in a pile of mashed potato and pours gravy over his head. That is how I feel about momos. Unfortunately, even though we are trying to seek out little local places which are quiet or are playing traditional music, as soon as any Westerners walk in every single one starts blasting out Ed Sheeran.

After a bit of boredom and some flab set in, we started doing some days rides out of the city. Richard’s declared that he’s a bit fed up with hills, and would rather do some flat rides. Should have thought of that before flying to Nepal then Richard. Our first cycling in Kathmandu was a bit of a shock to the system. It’s a crowded city with narrow streets in the centre and unimaginably busy roads on the outskirts. The pollution is out of this world, and though neither of has have known lung problems we’ve both been wheezing for air as soon as we hit a hill.

The ride took us up past the Nagarjun forest reserve to the north of the city. It only took a few kilometres to leave most of the traffic behind, and the road was in decent condition and shaded by the forest edges. The views back down into the Kathmandu valley were beautiful. It looked like a pretty toy city with brightly painted houses amongst rice fields. It’s hard to believe the grime and chaos when seeing it from above. We wound round the roads far away from the city into stunning countryside with the clouds amongst the peaks, the steep rice terraces dropping into the valleys and several mountain hawk eagles circling above. Richard didn’t get his wish for flat roads, but very few places we’ve seen have been as unforgettable as this first ride in Nepal. 

The ride back into Kathmandu was terrifying. We hit the ring road which encircles the city and felt like little flies being swatted at by the enormous lorries and buses which pull out randomly, stop randomly and bellow out black smoke from their exhausts. The mopeds weave precariously between them, and no one looks where they’re going. The idea seems to be that you just make whatever forward progress you can through any gap or on whichever side of the road is fastest, and only try to avoid the things that are right in front of you. You just ignore anything happening to your side or rear, expecting those things to take care of themselves. The road surface doesn’t exist. It’s been obliterated by years of the insane amount of traffic on it, and now is just a wide ribbon of dust and stones and massive holes everywhere. I am a bit shell shocked when we make it back to the hotel.

Over two weeks pass and still no word on the visas, and no acknowledgement of attempts to chase them up. It’s a bit worrying at this point, because the day is approaching when we won’t have enough time to ride across Nepal to the border before our Nepalese visas run out.

We carry on doing rides out of the city, and mostly we stick to the first route we did which remained our favourite. The Kathmandu valley runs east/west so that is where the city spreads out and where the major highways are. The north becomes hilly quickly though, so it doesn’t take much riding to get out into the countryside. We arrived in Nepal at the end of the rainy season, and the rice terraces we climbed into were a rich and deep green when we first did the ride, but a couple of weeks later the colours are changing to golds and browns as the rice gets closer to harvesting.

There is still no sign of the visas. We’re in a bind waiting for them. We have to balance cycling in Nepal with being tethered to Kathmandu. We plan a multi-day loop to see the mountains in the east, but making sure that we stay within striking distance of the city in case our visa appointment comes up.

We set off on the main highway to begin with, and it’s about as pleasant as we expected. After an hour’s cycling we still weren’t out of the cityscape. Each major junction has 2 or 3 traffic police who act as traffic lights and roundabouts. Mostly they are obeyed, but as soon as their backs are turned people chance it from all sides, regardless of oncoming traffic. I just can’t get on board with it, so wait politely and forlornly to turn across traffic. There’s the sound of screaming nearby and a very distressed woman tries to run into the road, but is held back by a policeman. She’s very clearly unwell, and though the policeman is being surprisingly gentle she keeps trying to hit and kick at him and eventually has to be wrestled to the ground by several bystanders. Some young boys are gathering rocks and start circling her, but then the human traffic lights have done their job and are waving us on to cross the junction.

We finally turn off the highway into some villages and onto quieter roads. It’s turning into the hottest day since we arrived in Nepal and there’s no shade at all. Richard is really struggling, which is a problem since our objective is to ride high enough that we might see Everest from the top of another mountain, and we haven’t started the main climb yet. We stop to get cold drinks and the kid serving in the shop seems over the moon to have the chance to practice his English while we sit in the shade of the shop and recover a bit. He tells us that it’s a long way up, and that we can put our bikes on the roof of a bus if we want to get up that way. It’s nice to know someone believes in us. After an hour or so we turn off onto an even smaller road that is too narrow for buses, so that ceases to be an option anyway, and it’s a long slow day of often 20% inclines. There’s a lot of pushing the bikes up when it gets too steep, some recriminations about what a terrible idea this was, but some pretty amazing views even though it’s quite hazy. 

We’ve treated ourselves to a hotel with a viewing platform, and that of course means that it’s at the very top of what we’re climbing. The final couple of kilometres were on stony roads impossible to cycle on, and then the hotel sits on its own little hill with a series of steep steps to the top and nowhere to leave the bikes at the bottom. We were both thoroughly defeated by the time the ordeal was over. And it then started to rain heavily, so was very cloudy with no view at all. We were helped with the bikes by some staff at the hotel, and they are so friendly and welcoming and upbeat that it’s hard to feel unhappy. One of them I think sees that we’re a bit deflated and reassures us that it won’t have been for nothing – it is usually cloudy up here in the afternoon and the clearest views are always in the morning.

We got up before dawn to see the sunrise, and sure enough the weather was clear and we could see all the way to the horizon from the viewing platform. From where we are the sun rises over the Himalayas in the direction of Everest. The sweat and tears we put in getting here made it an emotional couple of hours of just watching the light change over the mountains and the mist rise up from the valley around us. I came down from the platform when I was hungry though. The guy from yesterday is beaming when he comes over to see us, and seems genuinely lit up at how happy we are.

The way down the mountain on the other side is slow going at first, as the stony road continues, but once we reach the next village we join a larger road and have such a great descent that I manage to overtake a bus. The switchbacks aren’t too steep, so it’s a relaxed couple of hours of cruising while barely having to touch the brakes. We eventually join another highway though and it’s back to the dust, grit and grim concentration as we try not to get flattened by the traffic. We’re still going east at this point, and though the road and the towns are busy we are surrounded further out by mountains and rice terraces. The place we stop for the night sits atop another hill where we have some more spectacular views of the Annapurna part of the Himalayas.

The way back to Kathmandu is all on the main highway, and my heart is in my mouth as we get close because I know we have to join and cross the shitty ring road at some point and probably face death doing so. We develop the technique of glomming on to a motorbike or car going the same way across a junction (though it’s hard to tell because nobody signals) and pedalling furiously across alongside so we can use them as a shield. We make it back in one piece and hope that the waiting will soon be over.

It’s not.

The wait for the Indian visas goes on and on and we’re running out of time and out of options. I do really like Kathmandu, and we’ve had some of the best food ever here, but it’s still becoming tedious.

We’ve both become much more used to the flow of traffic and the way it works. Three weeks ago I thought everyone was insane for just zipping into and across traffic without regard, but now I do that too. I’ve accepted that people don’t let you go if you politely wait around, if you nervously edge out or if you dither. They’ll only give way if you force the issue, so headlong into traffic it is.

In the end though, as comfortable as we feel here, and as much as we’d love to properly cycle across this incredible country, we had to decide between extending our Nepalese visas in the hope that the Indian ones eventually materialise, or binning the idea of India and going somewhere else. If the former was a guarantee I think we’d wait it out, but it’s not. In a routine of regularly checking flight destinations, and becoming increasingly despondent as the costs increasingly rise, we seized upon a cut-priced flight to Bangkok two days before we have to leave Nepal. India is a famously maddening destination, and it’s amusing in a way that it’s been true for us without even setting foot there. It’s hard to see us giving it another shot, but we swore blind we wouldn’t be going back to Thailand, and yet here we are. 

A playlist for the ride: