Traveling in South Asia can be as full of surprises as entering an airport without having bought a flight ticket yet…one will never know how and where one is going to arrive! You find new directions and make new encounters—you can discover new culinary delicacies, or try out a few lines of the local language. You could earn bright smiles or tea invitations as often as you risk getting stranded somewhere with a flat tire in a cold mountain night.
Fortunately, the last incident did not occur during my trip last weekend. With four other friends, mostly German and American expats living in Kathmandu, we were determined to face any scenario to travel to what for us was a highly interesting location: the border between Nepal and Tibet at Kodari. Needless to say, like many people in the West, I grew up learning that Tibet is ‘occupied’ by China.
After a delay due to massive traffic jams and some communication problems with our driver Shiva, the 4WD Minivan hit the road for the long journey to the borderlands. All of us were in a euphoric mood despite a slight hang-over from the previous evening. Also the usual stomach problems plagued several of my travel companions’ sensitive digestive systems.
During the journey, we stopped several times to take snapshots of the beautiful Annapurna range to the north. Witnessing the majestic view while listening to some tunes on our iPods, everybody was lost in thoughts. Some even used the long journey for a refreshing nap or to indulge in some inspiring literature as I did when I started on Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha.
The first stop after lunch was a Bungee jump facility close to the Borderlands Resort on the way to Kodari. We didn’t take the bait and refused the 6,000-rupee offer for a four-and-a-half second adrenaline rush caused by jumping from the 160-meter high bridge. Interestingly, the majority of jumpers were not Western adventure tourists as one may assume. Rather, they were wealthy Nepalis and Indians coming for a weekend trip up to the periphery.
With close to 70 jumpers on that day, it must have been pretty good business for the owner of the facility. Had we stayed, who knows what kind of influential personalities we might have witnessed jumping from that shaking suspension bridge!
After several hours of traveling on an even steeper and dustier road we started to get really excited about this gloomy border in the mountains. The architecture and the infrastructure became more and more minimalistic and shops were increasingly offering Chinese products as we were approaching the bridge between the two countries.
The actual frontier was nothing more than a red line on the bridge that was carefully watched over by Nepali and Chinese soldiers. Visitors were neither allowed to set a foot on the line nor to take pictures.
On the other side of the bridge one could see a gateway with a huge golden star on a red background. Next to it there were buildings made with precast concrete slabs and huge satellite dishes on top of them. The surveillance cameras that seemed to be everywhere were probably monitoring every square centimeter of the bridge visible on monitors inside the compounds.
The atmosphere was quite tense, though we dared to make jokes with Nepali and Chinese soldiers as well as trying to step over the red line and taking hidden pictures. We were soon warned by Nepali officials that that cameras were not allowed on the bridge, and that the Chinese would not hesitate throwing them into the river 40 meters below.
On our way back to the 4WD we realized how long the line of trucks was, waiting in front of the Chinese customs building, being filled with Chinese rice-cookers, lighters, fake brand clothes and other goods ready to float on the Nepali markets.
After a night in the resort sleeping in tents close to the river, listening to its constant flow, I felt a bit like Siddhartha when he arrives at the riverbanks that mark two significant transitions in his life, the first one from a mendicant to become a wealthy salesman and the second one back from a life of possession and debauchery to subsistence in material poverty and spiritual growth. We were having a wonderful day in the sun; enjoying the pool and the good food we were offered.
While drinking milkshakes we were contemplating our experiences about the atmosphere we’d witnessed at the border the day before. It was somewhat weird for those of us who came of age in the 1990s and 2000s that there are boundaries which even we couldn’t cross with our ‘privileged’ status as European or American passport holders.
Not to be able to immediately cross a border was a new record for us travelers and we could see that this country on the other side was not accessible for everybody. There must be something behind this closed border that somebody wants hidden, I thought at the time.
On the way back everybody was once again listening to music via their earphones and watching the sunset. As our vehicle slowly came closer to the suburbs of Kathmandu, I asked myself why it wasn’t illegal to cross this specific and much more obvious frontier between harmonic and clean nature to frenzied and polluted urban chaos.
The writer is a student of anthropology from Germany, currently working with the Media Foundation, Kathmandu