Day 68 - It's...no, wait...We're Grubby!

To our surprise the 8 euro guesthouse included breakfast delivered to the room - and very good breakfast to boot! That and the rest of the Swiggy haul from last night had us suitably caloried up for the day today, if a little later leaving than hoped.

We had similar enough luck to yesterday with the trucks so it was mostly manual work to the border...lame! It wasn't without it's Indian oddities of course.

The border crossing took two hours - most of which was spent standing in queues, although we did find a great lunch spot in that sitting in the border guard chairs chatting away with them. Perhaps that gives you some idea of how this border was! If Georgia was a 10/10 on the strict scale, this was a -1/10. Why -1? Let me explain.

First we arrive at the biggest border between India and Nepal, cross out of India and go to the border tents. Border tents. Like the hotels recording forgeiners they have their big book to record everyone's movements. But they can't record ours yet because we haven't been to the immigration office. So we cross back into India, go 600m back and then join the end of a very long, very not moving queue. We're then told that we can jump because we're only two and not a bus load...oh and we're departing not arriving. Then we join another queue which was more akin to a group of school kids milling around until their name is called. Stamp acquired we had officially left India! Wohoo! Nevermind the fact that we were freely roaming around in India... Go back to the border, get signed out, cycle into Nepal and...well actually we're just in Nepal now. It's a special moment when you have to look up/ask where the border guards are. Find the immigration office, which is vaguely near the border and entirely optional, turns out we have to pay in cash. We don't have cash "oh there's an ATM that way" (points vaguely into Nepal). Cycle 500m into the country, then return to the border to pay our visa fee and actually enter the country... Therefore -1/10 because it's not only not strict it's actively not a border!

At this point it was 3pm (we'd crossed another timezone...15 minutes forward 😅) and we had 80-something miles to do (140km). Not ideal, but not much to do but cycle. The air quality was noticeably better, the driving noticeably worse. To our surprise we caught a lorry for a few kilometers on the one lane main road, which was quite the rollercoaster. He kept giving us thumbs up as we veered into the opposite lane to overtake other lorries/people/bicycles/you name it, and was very considerately indicating and braking slowly for us which was nice. He was going pretty quick though and after one particularly enthusiatic acceleration he dropped Emma...and then stopped to wait for her to catch up!!! What a legend! Sadly he stopped for fuel soon after and we were on our own for a long while.

Nepal is similar to India in many ways but the first impressions are the vibe is very different, and I prefer it so far. I think because there are fewer people, they are less in your face and more friendly and do less unsolicited videoing!

We climbed up our first hill (since Georgia!?!? - the world really is flat) with a stunning sunset behind us and out of the smog for the first time in what feels like forever. Don't get me wrong - the air quality is still appalling but it feels like sweet relief after the past weeks. By the time we were threading through the queues of terribly managed traffic around the roadworks where they had ripped up the entire pass and then were working on section by section it was full dark and we were looking at a very late arrival.

We pushed on until 10pm when we finally arrived at our planned destination, grubby and hungry but not tired (man these touring legs just don't get tired) and pretty satisfied. My quick look for hotels before going offline in Nepal (mobile data is very expensive here) proved fruitful as we arrived at a hotel with 6 euro rooms, very friendly staff and a beautiful restaurant and garden. The en-suite is in a room the size of a usual toilet stall and curiously lacks a sink, but the lukewarm shower did the job.

When I say grubby, I mean GRUBBY. Easily the dirtiest I've ever gotten from a dry road ride. The friendly hotel staff were loving it "you guys are great!".

Food spend today: 14.05 euros

Tea consumption: 6