Today was boarder crossing day with about 80km ride to the Nepalese boarder. We started the with wet weather gear as it looked like we were in for significant rain, however by mid morning I was stripped down to my underwear in a service station forecourt removing the wets due to the heat! I received a few odd looks but I could not find an alternative change room! Ha

The ride to the boarder went smoothly and as with most boarder towns they tend to be decidedly yuk! This boarder was no exception with mud roads, trucks parked for approx 5km’s in the lead up to the crossing due to customs (must take a day or so to que for them). The place was so disorganised that we actually rode straight past the Indian boarder crossing and into Nepal, only stopping at the customs building before we realised what we had done!

We back tracked back into India (a distance of approx 200m) and found a grubby office in amongst the shops that wa she customs office. We cleared the bike Carne’s and moved onto the immigration before once again moving through to Nepal.

The Nepalse customs and immigration buildings were only slightly better and just as beurocratic with us sodding around as the officers did not know what needed to be done to complete the Carne documents prior to allow us to move on.

Finally we were into Nepal and on our way towards Pokhara which was a ride of approx 180km and the wether was closing in. We soon noticed the surroundings change shortly after we progressed as the towns had curbs and gutters, there was considerably less rubbish and our view of the world got a whole lot nicer! Nepalese people clearly were taking pride in their villages and it showed.

The roads approaching Pokhara were very twisty and hilly, but made for a great ride, although it was quite wet by the time we made it to town and stopped at a fantastic little hotel (Hotel Garden) run by an extremely polite and friendly chap by the name of “Promise”.  Nothing was too much trouble.

We had had had a great ride today and Nepal was shaping up to be a great leg of our Mad Ride.