From Nepal to India...and back

Jacqueline and I just passed a milestone--one of those rite-of-passage things vaguely like getting a drivers license or having your first legal beer. Yes, that’s right, we were deported for the first time, and it was also our first experience in bribing immigration officers. We feel very grown up now.

The short version is something like this: our Nepal visas expired. They made us leave. They walked us over the border to India. All our stuff was still in Nepal. We paid off a few people, on both the Indian side and Nepali side, to be able to cross back over into Nepal.

The longer version requires an explanation about Nepal visas. There are two types: a free "temporary" visa for those people staying three nights or less, and a $50 "extended" visa for those people staying longer. Upon our return to the Kathmandu airport from Tibet, we got the free visa. We were only staying three nights before leaving with our tour group for India. We met up with our people, and on the third day we started our trip down to the Nepal/India border. Abhi, our group organizer, informed us we would be staying overnight in Bharahiya, on the Nepal side, before crossing over the next morning. We were a little concerned--our understanding was that we’d be staying on the Indian side of the border that night. The extra night in Nepal meant overstaying our visas. No problem, he told us, it happens all the time. People decide to stay longer, and they just pay up for the extended visa. We can take care of it at Immigration when we get to Bharahiya. OK, great. But then, to our alarm, we looked closely at our passports and noticed too late that immigration in Kathmandu had written the wrong expiration dates on our visas--they had mistakenly given us two days instead of three. We had already overstayed our visas and didn’t even know it. We were a little nervous--we suddenly had two potential complications--but Abhi assured us again that it wouldn’t be a problem.

After checking in to our seedy border-town hotel in the afternoon, we went to Nepal immigration, a small compound right at the border. We explained our situation to an official; we showed her our passports, the date on our Lhasa/Kathmandu boarding passes; and inquired about extending/upgrading our visas. The conversation was circular, with many of the same exchanges repeated several times, but in essence it went like this:

“No, no. We can’t do that here, only in Kathmandu. This is expired, you have to leave right now.”

“Can’t you extend it!?”

“No extend. You have to leave now. You can’t stay. You go to India now.”

“uh…ok. We’ll walk over to India. We’ll get a stamp and come right back, yes?”

“No. You can’t come back the same day you leave. 24 hours minimum. Maybe you come back to Nepal tomorrow.”

“We can’t do that. We’re with a group of people. We leave with them tomorrow. All our stuff is in our hotel here. Why can’t we extend?”

“No you have to go now. You can’t stay here. You go now.”

Nepali guards escorted us to the large Indian flag twenty yards from the compound. Assorted pedestrians, rickshaws, trucks, and livestock inched their way along the dusty dirt road that connected the two countries. We tried to convince ourselves we could sort everything out on the other side. We walked past the Indian sentries into Sounali’s main street, a wide dirt road choked with trucks, carts, cows, feral dogs and taxis. Food stalls and endless rows of small shops lined either side; car horns, touts, beggars and rickshaw riders all competed for our attention. Indian immigration was hard to spot, hidden amidst the tightly packed buildings and all the miscellaneous storefront merchandise. Almost 100 yards down the road, a small sign pointed to the crumbling building and an open-air porch/overhang right at the road edge; a large wooden table sat under the eaves; three large middle-aged mustachioed men leaned back on rickety chairs.

We put on our cheerful faces and handed over our passports.
“Where’s your luggage?” they asked suspiciously.
“Oh...no luggage. Quick trip.”
Still suspicious. “How quick?”
We had to explain ourselves. We have to do this to renew our Nepal visas, we said. We’re going right back. But we’ll see you tomorrow morning when we return with our group.

"You can’t enter India and leave same day. You have to stay here; you go back tomorrow."

"Ah, yes, that’s our problem, we have to go back today..." We explained again, as simply and as cheerfully and as deferentially as we could. They offered us seats at their table. Again they told us we had to stay 24 hours. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, the men nodded and listened, still suspicious, still sizing us up, studying our visas. We were in a strange no-man’s land between borders; officially departed from Nepal but not admitted into India. We didn’t really exist. We pondered all our luggage locked up in our room across the border, the possibility of finding lodging in Sounali for the night, and wondered how we would get word to Abhi to let him know what was going on.

Several sandaled and dreadlocked euro-hippies passed by to get their passports stamped by the men during the course of our conversation. "Destination?" "Yeah, we go to Varanasi…." they replied in accents somewhere between German and Stoner.

As we were all sitting together at the table, one man leaned back and gave us the head-wobble. "Well, we would like to help you..."

"That’s great" Jacqueline said. "I’m sure there’s some sort of special processing fee to help speed up the paperwork?"

The processing fee was, unsurprisingly, on a "sliding scale." US Dollars preferred. The officials were happy to back-date our entry forms and stamp our exit forms. We shook hands, smiled, bowed, gave our namastes, and triumphantly walked back over into Nepal, where we paid another processing fee so as not to have our questionable documents scrutinized too closely.