ASIANOVERLAND.NET SYDNEY TO LONDON DAY 342: CHITWAN NATIONAL PARK TO KATHMANDU, NEPAL

Nepal has featured in Indian Hindu history for thousands of years, and is a Hindu monarchy. Since ancient Indus Valley civilisation times, Nepal has been on the trade route or "silk road" between Tibet and India.

Nepal is also the birthplace of Buddha in 563 BCE, at Lumbini, close to the Indian border. Nepal has always been a spiritual place, sharing both the Hindu and Buddhist religions. As Buddhism and Hinduism developed and changed over the centuries throughout Asia, both religions prospered in Nepal, and produced a powerful fusion beginning at least from the 5th century AD, especially in the three hundred year period between 1500 and 1800 AD.

Nepal has never been colonised. Nepal has always been an effective barrier between the giants of India to the south and Tibet or China to the north. Nepal invaded Tibet twice, in 1788 and in 1791. On the second occasion, the Nepalese were defeated by the Qing dynasty and had to accept Chinese suzerainty, as did Tibet.

When the British were at their colonising, marauding best, the British invaded Nepal from India in 1815. However, the British underestimated the fighting spirit of the Nepalese Gurkhas, and were unable to defeat them. Thereafter, Nepal overcame the British Raj by closing its borders. China closed its borders as well, after ceding Hong Kong to the British for 150 years as a result of the opium wars.

China and Tibet were still closed in 1980, so the Himalayan view from Nepal was effectively the end of the overland road at that time. However, China opened the Nepal/Tibet border in 1985, so Corrie and I immediately travelled through China and Tibet over the Himalayas in 1985, reaching Kathamandu from Tibet instead of from London or Bangkok.

In 1980, we finally arrived at our 11 week London to Kathmandu overland destination, the legendary, spiritual  Kathmandu, on Knackers, a Bristol Double Decker. The late, great, Gary Hayes was our driver (RIP) in 1980, and I had the privilege of being the courier, with 21 punters. The overland journey was, is, and always will be, an adventure trip, but it is also in our opinion, the best. 

The Top Deck Asian Overland brochure which I used for both my eastbound and westbound itineraries in 1980, is here -

http://asianoverland.net/Top%20Deck%20Asian%20Overland%20Brochure%201979-80%20Version%202.pdf

These posts and my daily spiels, are a tribute to all of the drivers, crew and punters who have managed to complete an Asian Overland trip, which is a great achievement, irrespective of who they travelled with, or when they travelled.

My daily travel spiels are also intended to help others who have dreamed of doing an overland trip, by showing you our itinerary, other possible itineraries, things to do, and linking you to the places, photos and highlights along the way. If you’re stuck at home and/or unable to travel, these spiels may help you have a virtual (COVID) trip, or plan a new one.

Each day I give the punters a little spiel about a special feature, adventure, destination or country we are travelling through. I try to tell you something you don't already know about a country, place or people, rather than repeat what you already know.

We often used to joke as we were travelling, that the world outside our bus windows wasn’t real, but was really a cardboard cutout, put there so you can imagine you are on an overland trip. It’s hard to imagine the greatest views in the world, but if you look out the windows as we travel  through Nepal, you really are seeing the best views in the world. In today’s internet world, you can add your own photos if you’ve previously travelled to Nepal, and if you haven’t, you can add your own photos or cardboard cutout photos for your own virtual trip. 

You can think of yourself as Catherine the Great, whose 6 month tour from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea to visit her newly conquered territories, "New Russia" and Crimea, is often regarded as the first cardboard cutout tour, visiting "Potemkin villages". Or maybe those "Potemkin villages" on the Dnieper River were real villages?

All along the windows on the horizon to our north, are the magnificent Himalayas, which are obviously NOT cardboard cutouts.

Gary Hayes and I drove Knackers on the eastbound overland from London to Kathmandu, departing 12 June, 1980, and arrived in Kathmandu only one week late on 28 August, 1980. One week late is pretty good timeliness for Top Deck overlands. On the eastbound overland, I had to spend a week in Ankara, Turkey, at the Iranian Embassy, getting visas for the punters to travel through Iran (no American visas were issued, and my three American punters were not allowed to travel through Iran). Our 1980 visas were the last Iran visas Top Deck crew managed to obtain for a few years.

From my viewpoint in Tehran on the way east, facing down the barrels of about 30 Uzi submachine guns held by angry Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Persians were angry at Americans and getting angrier at Europeans. The Persians had ruled Iran for about 2,500 years of consecutive rule until a CIA coup led to the Shah taking power in 1953. In 1979, overwhelming Persian people power led to the Ayatollahs taking back control of Iran from Westerners. When we drove through Tehran in July, 1980, there were millions of angry people yelling “Death To America”. We managed to escape the masses and travel to the outskirts of Tehran, where we stopped outside a school for a short break.

Our bus Knackers was immediately surrounded by aggressive Revolutionary Guards with Uzi submachineguns pointed at our faces. We managed to escape again, but I wasn’t looking forward to repeating the experience. Apparently, we had stopped outside the Tehran school where the American hostages were STILL being held (Why haven't they been released yet???!!!). The Revolutionary Guards must have thought that, with the American rescue mission helicopters having recently crashed in the Iranian desert, Plan B was a double decker bus with a top speed of 80 kph making a dash to the Pakistan border 2000 kilometres away!! (The movie Argo made in 2012 is incredibly realistic in the way it records a similar escape mission from Tehran at the same time we were in Tehran, and sends shivers down my spine when I watch it, as it brings back clear nightmarish memories of our 1980 Tehran adventure).

Afghanistan was also not a good overland travel option in 1980, and hasn't been much better since. The Russian-backed Afghan Government had proposed many reforms to women’s rights, marriage law, and land law to the Afghan feudal system. In response to those reforms, the west led by the CIA, funded and provided weapons to radical Islamic groups opposed to women’s rights and marriage reform, creating and/or arming mujahadeen, Bin Laden, al quaeda, and the Taliban. The CIA-armed Islamic uprising against the reforms led to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan was pretty hot in 1980, and didn’t look like easing soon enough for us to travel through it. The last two Top Deckers which travelled through Afghanistan in 1979, had to cross the war zones and the front in dangerous circumstances.

When Corrie and I had a chance meeting with President Jimmy Carter in Nepal in 1985, I said to President Carter that I was sorry he hadn’t won the 1980 election.

President Carter quickly responded: “I don’t”.

I didn’t understand President Carter’s response at the time, but recent evidence that the CIA was working against President Carter’s attempts to have the hostages released before the 1980 Presidential election, explains President Carter’s response;

“Blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal. …

Mr. Carter’s camp has long suspected that Mr. Casey [William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later Director of the Central Intelligence Agency] or someone else in Mr. Reagan’s orbit sought to secretly torpedo efforts to liberate the hostages before the election  …

Mr. Casey was alleged to have met with representatives of Iran in July and August 1980 in Madrid leading to a deal supposedly finalized in Paris in October in which a future Reagan administration would ship arms to Tehran through Israel in exchange for the hostages being held until after the election. …

“I just want history to reflect that Carter got a little bit of a bad deal about the hostages,” he said. “He didn’t have a fighting chance with those hostages still in the embassy in Iran.”

 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html

Kathmanu, Nepal and Tibet have a calmness or 'kama" about them which Westerners could learn from, if we bothered to look and learn.

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