The Friendship bridge between Tibet and Nepal (from the Tibetan side) |
Nearly a vertical kilometre of rock had slipped into the valley |
Once across, we climbed into a jeep to take us across this spring's landslide on the road to Kathmandu. "The road has been mended now?" we asked and the driver made a non-commital gesture. "Yes but it isn't as good as before." This didn't bode well given our experience of Nepali roads 'before'. But even for cynics, the site of the landslide was shocking. Thousands of tons of earth had avalanched into the valley causing a blockage that now holds a lake at bay. The two lonely bulldozers attempting to clear the earthen ramparts looked like a symbol of pathos. Where rocks buried dozens of metres below the surface of the hillside, for millennia, have been plunged into free air and catapulted to the valley bottom, what are a couple of bulldozers but child's toys? No wonder houses were swept away and three hundred people were killed.
Always nicer to be on the inside of the bend! |
Lower down the valley, the survivor villages spread out beside the road. Their brush with death lay half a year behind them. It was business as usual. The driver stopped to greet friends, no matter how many cars behind him bellowed impatiently; bored officials checked our passports in duplicate and triplicate; tiers of rice paddies dropped away below. Nepal is fertile, green, luscious; surely it should not be so poor? Before long, we drove into the thicket of traffic around the capital and remembered the calm and order of Chinese roads with longing.
But when we met up with the rest of the group at the Third Eye for a farewell meal, we were happy to find them excited by Nepal. Some had anticipated finding Kathmandu a very modern city and we had raised our eyebrows, thinking of its sole functioning set of traffic lights and the thirteen hour-a-day powercuts. But they told us that they found Nepalis very warm where Tibetans had seemed distant, cold. As for the menu, it made a welcome change from noodle soup and fried rice and 'grandma'. We all tucked into Everest beer and Newari curries and toasted our return to Nepal.
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