Apparently a normal altitude and a majestic hotel room was all it took for me to have my first full, good night’s sleep in over a week.

Yup, I slept a full 7 hours last night uninterrupted.

Thank God I got that good night sleep because today was gonna be a long day.

Despite Kyirong, the town I stayed in last night, being only 24km from the border and then Kathmandu being only another 155km away, it would take almost 11 hours to travel between the two cities.

Yeah, it was a long day.

Crossing the border

Now, if you look on Google Maps for how long it takes to get to the border, it tells you it takes a scant 26 minutes.

What it doesn’t take into account is all the construction going on and the one lane roads that slow traffic down to a crawl.

I don’t think we ever did more than 20 km/h the entire way there and that 26 minutes turned out to actually be almost 90 minutes.

But, finally, at 10:30am, we had reached the Chinese immigration side of the border.

Now, I had read that it would take about 30 minutes to get through immigration.

Well, yeah, that wasn’t true.

It actually took almost an hour and a half and we still hadn’t even gone through the Nepalese side’s immigration.

A few of us, including myself, were pulled to the side to open our bags.   The officer seemed interested in whether we had an anti-Chinese books or products in our bags.

A bit intrusive but okay.

Haha.   I would soon find out what intrusive really was…

Finally, at just before noon, all 12 of us had made it through Chinese immigration.

We tipped our guide and driver and bid adieu.

Outside of the immigration area, we were met by a Nepalese guide who would take us through the immigration process on the other side of the border.

Welcome to Nepal!

I walked across an ominous green bridge covered in barbed wire and then my foot hit the ground on country number 65.

I still get that little chill and sense of excitement when I visit a new country and today was no different.

County number 65.   Hot damn!

Because Nepal’s time zone is 2.25 hours behind China, all of all sudden I had gone back in time and instead of noon, it was 9:15am again.

We all lined up to go through Nepalese immigration which is in a tiny little building.

One at a time we were asked to place our bags on a table and then an officer would go through each other thoroughly.

I mean they opened every single pocket of every single pouch.

Now, that was intrusive.

This was technically where the 7 day Tibet Tour ended.

From here we could either find our own way down to Kathmandu or, for the low, low price of 60usd, we could go into town by private transfer.

Not surprisingly, all 12 of us opted for that option.

I figured for that kind of money we’d each be transported in our own car or taxi to the capital city.

In fact, we were split into groups of four and each group would be sharing a jeep.

Well in that case, I claim shotgun.

Yeah, I claimed the front seat of the jeep while the other 3 in my group had to squeeze into the back.

Sorry, as much as I liked everyone in my group, I was gonna be a bit selfish here.

A little bit down the road we stopped at our first of 9 security checkpoints today and then at the visa office for Nepal.

For a couple of crisp $10 and $20 US dollar bills, my passport was now had a nice little visa on arrival sticker beside my Nepal stamp.

Oh happy days!

Now, let’s get to Kathmandu already!

A long, bumpy ride

So, Kathmandu is about 155km southwest of the border and if you asked Google, it would tell you that the trip shouldn’t take any longer than 3 hours.

Hahahahaha!!!

Not a chance in hell.

As we boarded the jeep we were told the drive would take about 7 hours and, sure enough that’s pretty much exactly how long it took.

As with the road on the last stretch on the China side, there was also alot of construction going on the Nepalese side too.

In fact, the first 30km was just pure dirt road.

And to think, I went out of my way to download stuff to watch on my tablet specifically for this long drive.

Yeah, there was no way I was gonna be able to watch anything on this very bumpy drive.

But you know what, that was a good thing because the beauty of Nepal was all around me outside of the jeep and that was a much better show.

After an hour, the dirt road suddenly turned into a paved road and for a brief moment I thought “well, that wasn’t too bad, time to enjoy the paved road all the way down to…”

Oh, what?

It’s a dirt road again?

Oh, wait, nope it’s paved again.

Oh, shit, it’s now paved but there’s so many potholes in it, it may as well be a dirt road.

Yeah, this continued on and on for pretty much the entire time until we actually hit the city limits of Kathmandu.

And now you know how it takes 7 hours to travel a mere 155km.

We did stop off for lunch midway through and I got my first taste of Nepalese food.

I ordered a Nepali khana set which is a plate of rice, dal, veg, achar sagh, dungruk, papad, salad, and mutton.

By the way, I only know what 4 of those words mean but, honestly, that’s what makes the dish so great.

Trying something new for the first time!

After lunch we continued down to Kathmandu with only a couple of stops along the way to stretch our legs or grab some coffee.

And then, at 4:30, almost 10 hours after we started in Tibet, we had reached Kathmandu.

Well, the outskirts of Kathmandu.

It would take another hour in the crazy downtown traffic to finally arrive at my hostel for the next 4 nights.

Finally arriving in Kathmandu

The 1c temperature I woke up to in Tibet was now a scalding 30c here in Kathmandu.

I’m staying in a private room at a decent hostel here but, of course, nothing compares to the elegant room I had last night.

Yup, I’ve become spoiled.

It’s like when someone flies first class for the first time and then just can’t bring themselves to go back to economy.

That’s kind of how I felt at that moment.

But you know what?   I was just happy to have a room and be able to plunk myself down on the bed after a long, grueling day of travel.

I relaxed for a bit, had a nice, long shower, and took advantage of the non-restricted wifi that Nepal has to offer.

I had tentative plans for tonight but, after the long day, I just wanted to grab some dinner and veg in my room the rest of the night.

And when I say veg, I mean typing up this blog.

It’s my form of “vegging out”.

And that was it.

Not much really happened but it was still an exciting day as I crossed another country off the list and it’s a place that, to me, has always been strange and mysterious.

And here I was, right in the middle of it.

I’ll be spending the next 3 days here so I’ll have plenty of time to see and explore this great city.

Maybe you’ll tag along too…