After spending a couple of days inside recovering from the hellish train ride from hell I was ready to move on. I arranged a bus to take me to and from here another bus would take me to Raxual and the border. Upon realising that the buses were crammed and reluctant to stop I chartered my own private jeep, which I believed would be awesome! It was not! It had to be push started. The driver was an utter wanker. It had no steering and I quite clearly remember when we crashed off the road due to the driver incompetence, somehow into the ditch on our side managed to right the jeep before it lurched over completely and keep going back up onto the road. We fell onto my side and had the jeep not righted itself I would have been invariably crushed. It was the closest I’d come to certain death and I’m writing this now days later and I have not thought about it once since it happened.

We continued our slow trip, never going over 25ks all the while my useless driver was all over the road. I wanted to hit him and throw him out. He pulled into a petrol station where he and the attendants tried to extort money out of me to no avail.

We finally made it to Raxual and he was paid, asked for more and I swore savagely at him and took off.

Raxual was simply a mud shithole. The main road was a single line of trucks maybe two hundred trucks long. Waiting to cross the border. The road and I say road liberally (it was simply a track that looked like it had been carpet bombed and was lined either side in thick wet mud and puddles everywhere) went forever. I grabbed a push tuk (a push bike tuk tuk – the most useless and painful contractions ever conceived) and set off for a bank. I needed a bank as I had found out that in India money exchanges will not issue US dollars, they are simply not allowed by the Indian government. You have to go to a bank, and as I found out a bank won’t either. Yes, fuck you too India!

The USD were needed as the Nepalese visa can only be purchased using USD. It was on this hunt for USD that a helpful local lead me to the banks and it was here that India really gave me the shits!

We were negotiating the mud walking and puddles and I simply walked the wrong way thinking what I was looking at was dry mud, instead I plunged down to my hips into an open sewer of warm thick viscous mud. I froze and then stormed out the other side, my aid looked at me horrified and lead me straight to a water pump where we washed down my jeans and shoes and socks. I stripped and changed clothes soaked my legs in iodine and just shook my head.

My aid stayed with me and managed to help me get through to the Nepalese visa station where I was able to pay using Indian rupees however at an extortionate exchange rate. A visa costs USD 99, I paid about USD 170. But it was successful and i entered Nepal!