I've never seen "28 days later" but apparently our ride through downtown Pokhara reminded my friend of that movie. Early the morning after spending a full day finding used bicycles, I'd set off with two people I had met in the mountains to bike to Kathmandu. The intention is to get to India, which unfortunately is in the other direction, but the Indian Embassy happened to be in Kathmandu and I can't get a visa at the border. It was 200km, sure, but at least we'd get a chance to turn this pain-in-the-ass strike into some kind of adventure. It took only 5 minutes of riding to start seeing the Nepal we'd been protecting ourselves from. Up in the mountains and in the tourist part of Pokhara, we had all been completely oblivious to the massive revolts in town. Pokhara, apparently, was the first city where protesters/rioters had been shot to death by military. By the time we came through it, the roads were littered with overturned barricades, broken glass and car parts, and partially burnt street bonfires. All the shops were closed.

Then for a long time nothing happened. By that I mean it was beautiful easy riding through mountain scenery and rice terraces. The first 20km or so was all slightly downhill, so it seemed for a while that it'd be no trouble at all to make the 200km in two days. By the time we hit the hills, though, we were all starting to reconsider. The bikes were holding up, but my brakes were shot and my friend had to kick his gears into place. But, due to the strike, the busiest road in Nepal we were on was almost completely devoid of cars to hit (aside from the occasional ambulance) so I never had to use the brakes anyway. The uphills gradually got worse, and one of our rank was having more and more trouble with the strain. Just before the end of the first day, he was lagging behind us and an ambulances offered him a ride to Kathmandu. He gave his bike over to some random passer-by and jumped in, all excited to get a free lift to Kathmandu (he wouldn't have minded ditching us completely, a fact I'm still a bit bitter about. He is, by the way, Israeli), only to find the ambulance dump him at the half-way point town. An hour later, the rest of us came to that town and waited for him for half an hour before finding him there. Apparently, he had completely misunderstood the ambulance driver or vice versa, and he was stuck there, pissed off, having lost the money for the bike as well as a means of getting to Kathmandu. He managed to find a midnight black-market bus to take us the rest of the way for 500 rupees (8 bucks), hoping to avoid the maoists at 1 in the morning, but the other guy and I decided to keep pushing along. So then there were two.

I don't think I've ever been so tired in my life as that next day (yesterday), and this is no exaggeration. It was 110km to Kathmandu, and we had both had grossly underestimated how far that was. It would've been managable if some rat bastard hadn't decided to put a 40km hill climb just before the entrance to the Kathmandu valley! It was rediculous! It'd be something on its own, but after 70km of ups and down was impossible.

I started to get cranky. This might be an indication that I'd lived too long in New York, but I started getting more and more aggrivated at the swarms of little kids all trying to make conversation with me. One thing I noticed about Nepal that I've said before is that these people are friendly to a fault. The whole reason I had to make it to Kathmandu in two days was because this guy I'd met at the Vipassana camp who took me around for three days was leaving the country the following day (today), and I'd felt obligated for the first time in my trip to make it there on time, out of sheer guilt of his friendliness to me. But EVERY TIME we'd stop at some tea shop, all the kids would run around us and not stop bothering us with questions about everything about us (as far as asking for the names of every member of my family) when all we'd want to do is relax and have some tea. Worst of all was all the kids shouting "What's your name?!" or "WHERE YOU FROM?" as I'd be fighting for my life pedaling up the hills past their homes. I literally couldn't spare the breath for an answer, but all they were doing is being curious and friendly. Eventually even their looks pissed me off. I had a green doorag on and Simon had a yellow hippie headband, we must have looked like something out of the movies for them, and I remember this one teenager giving me this awestruck "wow, I want to be you" face, knowing absolutely nothing about either of us and under any other situation I'd have been complimented but this day I just wanted to be invisible. Other people looked at us with obvious disdain, but another thing about Nepalis is they have no respect whatsoever of subtlety. However people judged us, they lucked directly at us and gave us their expression. We were on display, and all I wanted in the world was to do my thing and be ignored.

Everything was against our making it in 2 days. We managed to leave by 7, but by 3PM we had gone only 70km because of all the hills. There were a couple of burnt busses along the way, still sitting in the middle of the road. I checked, after seeing so many Hollywood films, to see that the gas tanks hadn't blown up (maybe they kept the gas for themselves?) but that didn't make the damage any less complete. These busses were Fucked. Anyway, stopping to get inside and hang around didn't help our time. At 4PM, we hit a storm, still 30km from town, and had to duck inside for a half hour 'till the rain passed. From then on it was a steady uphill the likes of virtually destroyed me. Simon, the friend, was feeling the same way, but after spending all my energy on the first 70km of hills, I was in no place to tackle 3 hours of steady uphill. At one point my body simply shut down. My legs just couldn't peddle any more and I couldn't catch my breath. I stopped the bike and stood there, delerious and gaping for air, and it was the only time in my life where I'd actually felt on the verge of passing out. I felt the overwhelming desire to fall asleep, and if I'd close my eyes even for a second I'd lose my orientation and almost fall. I fought the urge to pass out long enough to park the bike for a few minutes and relax, then I just pushed the bike up the rest of the hill during a gorgeous red sunset under the storm clouds. It took almost an hour until I found Simon having tea at this massive police checkpoint on the entrance to the Kathmandu valley. The military guys told us a curfew had been imposed in the city and we weren't allowed to enter. So there we were, 10km from Kathmandu after struggling through all that and we weren't allowed in. Worse than that, there was no place to stay near the checkpoint and it was completely dark, and we were freezing. My clothes were soaked between the rain and the sweat, and now that we'd stopped I was in desperate need of a hot shower. We were advised that the nearest hotel was half an hour bikeride down into the valley, just before the Curfew zone. We had no choice but to keep riding in the freezing darkness.

That ride down is sure to be one of the most memorable experiences of my trip. Simon held a small flashlight in his mouth as we rode down, but otherwise we had nothing but the occasional lights of buildings and fires to guide us. Very soon we found ourselves riding through the remnants of a complete warzone. Bonfires in the street, concrete blockades everywhere, military vehicles and troops scattered around, all the shops closed but people mulling about. We had to be extremely careful to ride slow enough to avoid the rocks and bricks in the dark. One time I didn't spot a brick in time and, since my breaks wouldn't stop me, barely slowed down enough to not fly head first when my front tire hit it. Even with all our precautions, it was impossible not to consistantly run over broken glass and it was a miracle the tires didn't burst.

We got in through the suburbs into town and learned that, in fact, there was no curfew and the cops at the top of the hill had no idea what they were talking about. Most likely, nobody tells them anything, but it was great news to hear we'd be able to have a gigantic feast on our arrival. On the way to the hotel we hit a big, loud group of protesters shouting something in Nepali. I couln't see much through the people but it looked like there was a big bonfire in the middle of the intersection and several people were carrying torches and chanting very loudly. It didn't take much thought to make that U-turn and find a way around.

We got to the hotel, had a delicious gigantic pizza each, and passed out immediately after. I woke up this morning almost unable to walk, and Simon's feeling the same way. Maybe tomorrow we'll have a look around town to see what's actually going on, but for now I'm laying very low until the saddle ass dies down a bit.

I'm on a mission to get to the Indian embassy tomorrow to submit a visa application so I can get out of here. Looks like Tibet's out of the question, since there's no Jeeps to drive me there and biking up those hills is out of the question. If the strike hasn't ended by the time my visa is cleared (5 days), it's a 2 or 3 day bikeride to the Indian border. Or, if I can find someone to buy my bike here, I'll splurge for a plane ticket.

In the next day or two I'll learn a whole lot more about the situation here, so my next post should be almost entirely about that. Hopefully, I'll find a good rooftop from which to watch hordes of protesters get beatup. The day I left Pokhara, apparently, 1300 protesters were hospitalized in Kathmandu alone. 1300! I still can't get over that number. I think under a dozen were shot, but it's definately reason enough to keep my distance. In any case there's a real curfew on tonight so no boozing it up for me after 9. On the bike ride over, we saw group after group of army dudes carrying massive guns walking the road out of Kathmandu, accompanied by the occasional Tank-looking thing (Bradley maybe? Definately something I've seen on the Iraq footage). I don't know where they were going or why they were leaving Kathmandu, but there must have been 200-400 of them in all. There's no shortage of them left here, though. I'll let you know more about what I see on my trip to the Embassy.