Leaving Bardia, Bardia Hideaway Cottage and Nepal February 27thth 2009 After nearly three months in Nepal and about 3 weeks in total with B, Kali and their family and friends it finally came time to head for Delhi to catch a flight. The Chinese weren't letting us in to Tibet, the Karakorum is closed because of snow until April, Southern Pakistan is too dreary to cycle through (Police escort all the way) and there's no other way West from India apart from via Afghanistan!!!!!! We are forced to fly over all these countries to either Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan from where we can continue West to Turkey. We also have the problem that if we want to fly to Uzbekistan we must get a visa in Delhi, we must also pick up an Iranian visa in Uzbekistan (Tashkent) if we want to be able to get a Turkmenistan transit visa. Travel in these countries is never easy. We were so sad to be leaving B and Kali and there wonderful little bit of paradise, but this time we won't be away for 7 years. We have plans to come back very soon to see how it all goes. Diliram, Simon, B, Kali, Bina, Isa, Bibek and Resham Riding proudly with our flower garlands. When we left we were presented with flower garlands by Bina and Kali and it was all very emotional, we'd spent all day everyday with them and they were all worried about us on our cycle ride to Delhi. We had to promise to ring them every night. It was very sweet. Cycling through one of the little villages on the way back to the main road at Ambasa Little kids running along with us just for fun. From Bardia we only cycled 50km that day to a small town with one guest house and then the following day had a fantastic 100km ride to Mahendrenagar the border town in the West. It's a great place and the people all the way along the road are super friendly. The only problem we had was that as ever Nepal seemed to know we were trying to leave and the wind decided to blow against us for the last 40km. We arrived absolutely knackered after 8hours of hard pedalling. The same thing happened in Mongolia, Russia and China! From the border we had 3 ½ days of riding to Delhi on the smoothest tar. Despite occasional crowded sections it was relatively peaceful, they're building a highway which we cycled on and this avoided most of the busy crazy sections through towns. There just aren't quite enough people in this part of India with cars to make the road horrible. We were very sad to have left Nepal, but we will be back. 'Twice is never enough'!!
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