Kathmandu Calling

Visiting Nepal and exploring it by road is an exciting proposition. You can combine a mix of Lake, Himalayas, Religious places and Forest reserves in a single trip.

I was based in Lucknow and we did a 5 day trip covering Pokhara, Kathmandu, Nagarkot and Chitwan National park. Crossed the border from Butwal above Gorakhpur. It was a family (Ashish and Praveen’s) trip with 9 members youngest being 2+ years and oldest 72 years. Although a bit tight but the Ford endeavour could accommodate with all the luggage on roof carrier.

If you have been reading my blogs, you’d know by now our love for road travel and the constraints we have had wrt leaves in Corporates in private sector. But then ‘where there is a will there is a way’.

1475 kms and 3 stop overs can be done comfortably in 7 days time.

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7am to 7pm – Lucknow to Gorakhpur (270km), cross over from Butwal for Pokhara (total 550km).

The first day’s one-time struggle was to find proper way to pack and load everything into the vehicle. It was to be done in a such a way that incumbents were comfortable for the long hours on road and towards that end they also had everything required during the journey hours.

Lucknow to Gorakhpur is an NH and 270km was done in 3 hours. Next stretch of 126km upto Butwal border was a bit rough wrt road condition. Took us half an hour for checking-in your vehicle at the border. All you need is to have all the original vehicle papers including PUC, Insurance and a copy of photo ID of all passengers. A token fee for vehicle is payable at the border.

You get into hill roads after crossing over and the roads are like they are in our interior hills of UK. Reached Pokhara close to 7pm. Scouted a nice hotel on the mall road and close to the lake.

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Morning sight was disappointing as there were clouds in the horizon, but it started clearing around 8 and we saw our first glimpse of Annapurna from our hotel balcony. Spent the day trekking to World peace pagoda from where we also enjoyed the hand/air gliding over the lake, In the evening strolled thru the mall road, shopped and dined. In the evening enjoyed open air cultural programme in our hotel.

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Early morning drove up to Sarangkot for viewing the sunrise, getting a birds eye view of town with Annapurna Himalayan range in the background. We also enjoyed some small aeroplane taking off and approaching for landing in Pokahra.

Explored the Phewa lake on our return to hotel. Packed up started for Kathmandu after breakfast.

50% of 201km drive on Prithvi Rajmarg was along Trishuli river. There was a small incident at two places enroute. There were check point kind of things, I drived through the first one. 2^nd one had a barrier, we were asked to get down for checking vehicle papers, permit etc etc. They will find one or other excuse for cutting a hefty challan on you. While I was sensing some hanky panky and arguing with the senior staff, the other guy took Praveen aside and they settled for NR 2k. Some 4-5kms down the road we found a tourist + police help centre, where we were told that there is no such official check point on the road. Guess it were the local goons fleecing cars with Indian registration no’s.

We reached Kathmandu in 5 hours and bypassed it to drive further 25km eastward to Nagarkot. We chose Nagarkot for its peace, colder climate and Everest view from there. Picked a nice hotel at 3k/night and settled around 6pm.

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Got up at 4.30 in the morning to go to a sunrise point and getting view of Everest peak. It was a bit cloudy but we were able to spot Mt E.

Had breakfast and checked out by 9 to go to Kathmandu.

In Kathmandu we saw the Narayanhiti Palace (from outside), Pashupatinath temple, Durbar square (pyar mein dil pe maar de goli – fame) and Narayanthan Temple (sleeping Vishnu ji).

Left Kathmandu around 4pm, drove 170kms and checked into a forest rest house in Chitwan National park by 8pm.

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Went for a one hour+ morning elephant safari in the reserve park. Came back had breakfast and checked out by 9am. Drive to Lucknow was 505km and we were home by 6+ pm.

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Kids had fun as we kept giving them breaks and we played movies in the cars media system. But like I said this was a bit rushed tour with road overkill specially for the family. However, the places seen were awesome and more then compensated for the pains of travelling. Family ke liye kabhi kabhi aisa trip bhi hona chahiye.

Ramro chyo 👍

Pheri bhetaula! ❤