DISPATCHES

Mazur

After loading our gargantuan pile of blue duffel bags onto the roof of the van, we crammed inside into our asssigned luxury seats, which were actually quite stiff contraptions made from steel tubing, dirty vinyl, and what looked to be old automobile parts. Night settled in as the bus rumbled off through the Kathmandu streets in a cloud of dust and diesel smoke.

At the end of the road was the Indian border, and a terrifying uncertainty. Would our massive quantity of baggage be seized and restrained by the customs officers? Would we make it to our train on time? The reality of making it to Gorakhpur to catch our train by 1pm was becoming ever more a fantasy. I watched the hours tick away on my watch, realizing we might not reach the station in time.

At 4:30am, in a particularly muddy section of the road, I was checking my watch when I was thrown from my berth in the back seat of the bus (a bench which crosses the rear section of the coach). I was wearing sandals, and my sleeping naked foot slammed against a rusty seat part. The skin at the end of my small toe sliced off. I reached down in the early morning light to touch a wet trickle of blood and rust. Oh, brilliant, tetanus, one more item to worry about..

The morning of May 30 unveiled large raindrops pelting down on a treeless plain under a steely gray sky. Our bus stopped several times to pick up herds of chattering or sleepy school kids, paying a few rupees to avoid the soggy walk to school.

We reached the border and struggled to locate our pre-assigned travel agent, who had booked our Indian train ticket by crossing over into India. I cringed with trepidation as I located him in a far and dirty corner of this seedy border town, shouting into the phone in Hindi, apparently engaged in a heated argument or bargaining session. Suddenly I flashed back to memories from 1991, when I had been cheated at this very border by a pen-chewing ticket tout.

He finally got off the telphone and we had time to discuss our forward transport while Walter and Lakpa were outside haggling about rickshaw prices. I examined our Indian train ticket and it seemed bona fide. The bus ticket he presented me with, on the other hand, was more of a scribbled note than any guarantee of an onward journey.

Left with no other alternative, we shook hands and I darted out of the office to join our three loaded rickshaws on our promenade through Nepalese and Indian customs. The key to the process of clearing these hurdles with a minimum of headaches seems to be keeping one's eyes and head lowered in a manner of respect, answering questions in monosyllabic replies, and just generally being overall polite but noncommital. I explained that we would be mountain climbing but gave up under duress and in a storm of incomprehension, reverted to that international phrase: trekking. I realized my sad inability to speak Hindustani could yield a long process which might force us to miss our train, if not return across the border from where we had just come.

But we finally cleared the last hurdle and our feet touched Indian soil — or should I say mud. Our rickshaw drivers led us to the shop of a young, aggressive gentleman who claimed to be our agent. He boasted that he was able to solve all of our problems, said we had just missed our bus, and that we should take a jeep. I studied our mammoth pile of bags and the tiny jeep he motioned to, then inquired about the cost. We could have nearly purchased our own jeep for the price he quoted.

I studied the situation as I sat inside a tiny canvas lean-to, eating an oily omelette off a dingy plate, sipping sweet tea from a chipped cup, watching the rain drops fall from the tarp into a row of tiny craters in the dirt. I noticed a long line of buses across the road and saw that some had passengers aboard. I looked behind me, and observed a gaggle of foreigners milling about near our pile of bags. I saw the young tout laughing and pointing at us and our bags and making faces and joking and chuckling with another gentleman. I realized that this was a trap sprung on us by this young gentleman, and in a mood of determination and concern over missing our train, I set off down the line of buses to find a solution.

I noticed a bus pulling out of the line was not fully loaded, and particularly, there was nothing on the roof. I approached the driver high up at the wheel and asked if we could join the bus with our luggage and indicated that we could. We hired some more rickshaws and removed our baggage from in front of the tout's office. There was shouting and gesturing, and people were running around, but we managed, thanks to help from Walter and Lakpa, to load our luggage on top of the bus and climbed aboard.

I noticed the other foreigners also managed to migrate away from the grip of the tout and had joined us. As the bus pulled away from the border, it looked as if we might be in the clear.

But no, the bus came to a screeching halt. The tout sprang aboard with another gentleman whom I remembered from crossing this border in 1998. The two touts began to work the crowd of passengers in the bus, taking money from whomever they could, and they stopped at our seats, shouting about our baggage and saying our tickets were not valid. I noticed we were outside of the village, away from the eyes of any police, and we were being done. A series of arguments erupted, and they ended up extracting 50 more rupees from us along with a large quantity of ire.

Our bus finally left and the touts jumped off. I saw them boarding a bus going the other way, like a troop of rats jumping ship on their way to feed on the scraps left by the next group of innocent travelers.

We roared through the countryside, beautiful and freshly green in the monsoon moisture. Rounding a bend, I saw a gaggle of brown-shirted men waving their arms and gesturing tour bus to pull over. My heart skipped a beat, 'Oh lord,' I thought, and choked a bit... police checkpost.

In 1998, along with a Welsh friend, Derek Owen, I had had a very tough time at this check post and narrowly escaped massive bribe charges which the soldiers manning the checkpost were levying. In retrospect, I realize that this post most likely serves to protect India from contraband coming across from Nepal; the formalities with the customs officials at the border seemed to be just that — they did not open one bag.

At this checkpost, army officers swarmed into our bus and began aggressively searching baggage in the overhead bins, checking passports and asking probing questions. They called Lakpa off the bus and forced him to climb to his bag on top of the bus, searching his bag in the company of two army officers. Then they called Walter to do the same. A chasm of doubt opened in my mind. Would we be forced to remain behind, and be left here, with all of our luggage confiscated? [transmission fails]

[For more, check out Walter Keller's dispatch]

— Dan Mazur, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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