Rudrapur

Day 31 – Ambala – Rudrapur – 24 Sep 2018

Now many of you might be thinking how did this place called Rudrapur come in our itinerary as a stop over. On our efforts to find the best way to enter Nepal from India, while coming from Ladakh, the western border of Bhimdatta(Mahendranagar in Nepal) is the closest option. However, google maps show the most common border crossing as  Bhirgunj near to Gorakhpur. Taking Bhirgunj entry point would be the best if you are planning to travel to Kathmandu from India. However, our plan was little different. We wanted to travel from one end of Nepal to the other. The major highway of Nepal, the H01, runs from the western border to the eastern border and this is what we were looking for. After lots of research and googling about entry procedures, taking car to Nepal, safety while driving through remote areas, stay options, food options, fuel options and many other things, we decided to enter Nepal through the Bhimdatta border which is not a common point of entry for Indians. But I am sure this decision helped us witness the true beauty of Nepal. If we had entered directly to Khathmandu, it would have been just a drive from one crowded city to another. However, the places we traveled on the western part of this small country, gave us such a lifetime experience. This part of the country is not that developed and you can find only very basic facilities here. Another biggest challenge we had to face after we decided to enter Nepal through Mahendranagar is that, we had to break our journey at 4 different places before Pokhara. This took a lot of time as there were very little information available about the western side of Nepal. Finding these stopovers was a major task and finally we zeroed down to Bardia National park as the first halt in Nepal. But still, Ambala to Bardia National park cannot be covered in a day and we had to find a halt between Ambala and Bardia National Park which is close to the Nepal border so that it will make things easier for the procedures at the Nepal border. After googling a lot for finding a decent stay which matches all these requirements, we selected Rudrapur in Uttarakhand as a possible night halt before entering Nepal. 

After a pretty decent breakfast from our stay in Ambala, we hit the roads around 10.30am. This was pretty late compared to our usual timings because the previous day drive had given us a nightmare. However, the roads ahead were majorly highways and it has been almost two weeks we have seen some 4 lane highways. We had lunch at one of the awesome dhabas on NH44 to Delhi. The lassi and Dal makhani were too good, and the ambience inside was unmatchable. We took the deviation before Delhi to Ghaziabad on the National Express road NE2 which has a speed limit of 120 for cars and 100 for heavy vehicles (A rare scene on Indian roads). NE2 which is also knowns as the Eastern Peripheral Express Way crossed the great Yamuna river as we moved across the Haryana-UttarPradesh border. Once we reached Ghaziabad, the roads were mostly under construction, and too crowded, making the drive very slow for us. After a while we got to the highway NH9 which goes to the Nepal border in Uttarakhand. It was amazing to think that we got to cross three Indian states in just one day! We got to witness our first ever sight of the holy river Ganges at GarhMukteshwar as we were travelling along one of India’s longest bridges. I stopped the car to get a view of the gigantic flow, and stepped out and crossed the road to click some pictures. I was amazed at the view of the river bank below the bridge, which was crowded with hundreds of yogis and pilgrims, offering prayers at the holy river. The roads were pretty good for sometime, but did not last long. It was already dark and I literally struggled to drive on the dug up Highway road. Too many unmarked deviations and potholes made it a disaster, and this continued until Rudrapur. However, without any major surprises, we got to Rudrapur around 8.30PM. The stay was a decent one, for a night’s halt.

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