Day 120. Rudrapur- Bhimdatta

We only have about 95km to go today but with the roads and a border crossing anything could happen. We set off into the usual traffic and incredibly bad roads but then we saw a sign that said “ toll booth ahead”. We’ve been caught like this before, it doesn’t necessarily mean better roads but much to our astonishment it turned out to be a beautiful dual carriageway which apart from one unsceduled Tomtom detour took us almost to the border. Yippee. 









A few sights from the unscheduled detour. Really nice countryside.

A few kms before the border we stopped in a town for snack and a drink,  there was an electrical shop next door, the GPS tracker needed new batteries so I asked if they had any AAA batteries, we were invited to take a seat the man opened the device and sent one of his boys away, while we waited we were offered a glass of ice cold water which always makes us nervous but it looked fine. The lad arrived with batteries, the boss fitted them and we were on our way NZD 0.77. 

We then headed for the border and Tomtom insisted we leave the beautiful road for a local market st and maps.me concurred. It didn’t feel right so we stopped and asked, sure enough this was the right way to the border, through the market. 
Then we headed about 5km along a narrow lane busy with scooters and bikes, about the width of the bridal track, then the best bit, a one way bridge over a river about 300m long. No controls at all, there were a couple of  very small passing bays, what a circus, but after a bit of twoing and froing and fender rubbing we made it across. 




Total chaos in the middle of the bridge. 

The actual border crossing was straightforward, the Carnet de Passage definitely simplifies things, it’s a shame more countries don’t use it.
 Our VOA was also straightforward so goodbye India part 1 and welcome back to Nepal. 
We are at our lodging for the night and its only 1:45. 
We have slept on a variety of beds as you can imagine, a lot of them as hard as....this one is next level hard. Oh well so are we!!!!!! 

We’ve had an interesting afternoon, went to an atm, success, sim card no success. 
There are a crowd of  teenagers here at our accommodation making a music video, it is very entertaining, they are very friendly and curious. 



Of course lots of selfies. 

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