Will we make New Year’s Eve?

It isn’t easy to leave Sauraha and Chitwan; there is a lot to see and to do. After having recovered from all the exciting races and interviews we pay a visit to the Elephant Breeding Centre. We feed special elephant biscuits to the small ones, who apathetically accept them. The neurotic behaviour of some of the chained elephants saddens us; a guard’s explanation that they are just impatient and waiting for their food isn’t very credible.

On our last day we cycle to Bis Hajaar Tal (20.000 lakes), accompanied by guide Santa Tamang. Santa is bird-watcher and tracker and knows about two million facts, all of which he shares with us during our trip. After an hour our heads start spinning, but he keeps on captivating us with stories about tigers, rhino’s, monkeys and hundreds of bird species. With piercing whistles he attracts birds we never saw before; we find fresh tracks of a Bengal tiger and a one-horned rhino, see two kinds of deer from up close, monkeys and have listed sixty-six different kinds of bird at the end of the day. Completely dazed but utterly satisfied we return to Sauraha, over narrow tracks, passing small water canals and swinging bridges.

Saturday December 30 we cycle to Hetauda, almost eighty kilometres to the east on the Terai Plains. A third kind of monkey shows itself in the forests lining the road, but we don’t know what kind it is, it looks like some kind of macaque. During a break a saddhu sits next to us and starts continuously staring at us. The man doesn’t say a word; we feel somewhat uncomfortable and get on our bicycles again.
In Hetauda’s hotel Avocado we hear that James Brown and Gerald Ford have departed this world, there is trouble in the Middle-East again and Saddam Hussein has been hanged; it is strange to watch television and unwillingly witness that the daily trouble in the world simple continues.

It is New Year’s Eve! It is a party on the bicycle; one of the most special days of the year, always a jubilee, we have made it through another year, a good reason to make a night of it. Today we only have to cycle 56 kilometres to the village of Daman that is situated on top of the highest hill around, where you are almost guaranteed a 100% view of the magnificent Himalaya-mountain range.
We leave Hetauda and follow the cement-transporting cable railway for some time, which was built in 1958 and leads from the Terai to Kathmandu, some forty kilometres over mountains and through valleys. Alongside a tributary of the Karra Khola (khola = river) we gradually ascend for ten kilometres, after which the real climbing through the Mahabharat Mountains starts.

It is quiet on the narrow mountain road; the birds have an undisturbed life and whistle songs to see out the last day of the year. Over and alongside hundreds of potholes and landslides we cycle into dark forests, where shreds of clouds obstruct our view. Half an hour later we’re cycling completely in the clouds and have to forget about the phenomenal views of the Himalayas. Sick and tired we ride the last kilometres to the Simbhanjyang Pass, until we reach the top at 2510 metres and the cloud cover breaks open; the promised vista absolutely comes true and delighted we descend to Daman. Rob and Aranka establish a new climbing record, with over 2100 altitude metres in one day.
From the view tower in Daman the panorama unfolds from Dhaulagiri and the Annapurna III in the west until the Everest in the east. This is a wonderful place to celebrate New Year’s Eve together!

Daman hasn’t seen a lot of tourists the past years. It is located in one of the many former no-go-areas where regular skirmishes between the army and the Maoists occurred. The facilities are meagre and sober; here and there new hotels, shops and restaurants are built now a political solution is underway. Hotel Sherpa Hillside offers rooms in an old ‘kathkogar’, a traditionally built Nepali wooden house. The ground floor with the mud floor is no more than a large empty pen that once served as storage. On the first floor there are three tiny rooms, each of them barely big enough to house two beds. There is no washing facility and a cabin put together out of welding steel serves as a toilet. In short, it is all we need.

It has become dark and freezing. In the accompanying restaurant a large pot of hot coal is shoved under our table to warm us up. The party can start, but how do you celebrate without any entertainment, without being amused whilst lounging on your couch, without pubs, without music, without television, without a computer; how did they do it one hundred years ago? This year again no Dutch doughnuts, no cabaret, no apple-fritters, no champagne, no television show with a 2006 retrospect, no full living room with friends and loved ones, no fireworks.
But we do have two fantastic new cycling friends, hot lemon with whiskey, dal bhat (rice with lentils) and the convivial hostess Manju Sherpa, in one of the most beautiful spots of Nepal. And nice smelly clothes, a great mood, hundreds of stories told by Rob, Aranka, Peter and myself, another bottle of Royal Stag, the sixth failed digital picture, a silly joke and eyelids that slowly but surely fall shut.
All four of us do our level best to make it to twelve o’clock, the moment supreme. Last year we failed, when we fell asleep at half past nine in a farmer’s shed in Oman, after having cycled with fierce headwinds the whole day. This time we have to make it.

At half past ten the four of us are sitting on a bed, the last bottle of Royal Stag is emptied and we look at each other, tired but fulfilled.
“What kind of fireworks have you got Rob?”
“Well, just some fancy rockets and screaming kitchen maids, that’s all. And you?”
“I only have four thousand-bangs firecrackers and a box of strikers.”
“Mmm. Not really worth the trouble.”
“No. Sleep?”
“Yeah, let’s do it. Happy New Year.”
“Yes, Happy New Year all of you.”