Here you will find our gallery, a brief resum of our trip in pictures.
Hope you will enjoy it.
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From Kakarbhitta (Nepal) to Siliguri (India)
Cooking time: 2hours
Difficulty: 1/5
Introduction dish
A simple and economic dish, for a everyday life. Straight forward and quick.
Ingredients
- Carnet de passage
- Passports
- Nepal entry stamp abs visa not expired.
- Indian visa
- Resistance to Indian horn blowing.
- No cash needed at all.
Method
-1st Step; Exiting Nepal
- Easy entrance, when you get into the arcade entrance at your left there is a metal gate, people are probably going to guide you there. Once inside park your vehicle and go walking to the massive and underused building.
- First facility is the costumes, there they are goanna stamp your Carnet. Fast and easy.
- From there you have to walk to the next door and enter to immigration, where they are goann make you fill up a form like the ones on the airports. Then they will put a little and quite exit stamp in your passport and you are ready to go.
Cross with your vehicle the river that acts as a border and after 1 km; welcome to India!
-2nd Step; Welcome to Indian, the land of horning.
- After the
bridge there isa quick passport control. There, a part from writing down your details, they are gonna Inform you where the rest of oficines are, and you have to be motivated to find them,specially if it’s night time. Is a border that you easily can cross without getting any stamp. So make sure you get them all. - On your
right you will find first the customs where they will efficiently stamp your Carnet the passage. - 150 meters ahead and getting inside of a road on your right you will find the immigration office, is quite hidden but when you get there you will know it thanks to the massive blue sign with light
!, just fill up a form, answer few questions and you get your passport stamped. - Just go back to your vehicle and if you are lucky someone not much motivated is
goanna ask for your passport stamped, otherwise you can just leave…
Tips to make this dish a bit more digestible
- the exchange rate is better on the Nepal side, so if you have any extra rupees exchange them before. Otherwise, you will have another opportunity in the Indian side.
- It’s open from 6 am to
10 pm , and it’svery easy crossing, so you will have a flexible timing to cross.
From Banbasa (India) to Bhimdatta (Nepal)
Cooking time; 1-2 hours
Difficulty; 1/5
Introduction dish
At this point and after crossing India you are probably an expert chef! Well, now is time to enjoy and easy cooking dish, a little main course that will delight your taste and make enjoy every subtlety.
Ingredients
- Carnet de passage with the entry stamp of India.
- Passport
- Indian visa not expired.
- Car papers.
- 50-100 Indian rupees in cash.
- 30-100 dollars in cash (depends on the visa you want to apply)
- 1 passport sizes pictures.
- A big smile on your face!
-1st step; Exiting India.
- Luckily the last 70 km of the road coming from Rishikesh is not as horrible as the rest of the way. Though the roads in the border area are dramatic again.
- You will arrive at a nice bridge and damp right on the border crossing the Mahakali river. After crossing the first small bridge you will be stopped, and you will be asked to pay some money for a yellow paper that still now we don’t know what is it for. And the price will be quite unclear and definitely not official. They charged us 55 rupees for having 6 wheels. Nevertheless, everyone has this paper so you better get it.
- The second bridge is seriously narrow, and though they control the traffic there is always some motorbike that will be there to mess it up. So after waiting for your turn get ready to get tight. Especially if you are driving a big truck like us.
- The first building you will find on your right is the immigration office, time to get your passports
stamped, and be registered on a thick book. - Next building is the
costums office, there is where you will get your exit stamp for your Carnet de passage! Very friendly people! - Driving a little more meters you will find the
liggadfe control and another passport and car papers registration. Very veryligh car check!
Time to drive trough 2km of no-mans land, but beautiful land with lots of people chilling out. It doesn't really seems a border.
-2nd step welcome to Nepal
- Is hard to know exactly when you are in the border, it just looks like a town, with shops, hotels and all and all… but when the
concrit road starts you will find very soon on your left theimigration office. - Important step this one; once in the office, you have to buy your Visa, right on arrival, and pay with USD in cash. Depends on your nationality and the duration of your stay. It will go from 25$ to 100$. And they will stick your visa and stamp the entrance. See the Nepal Visa post.
- After
that you cross with yourveichle a little registration office, and they are not evengoanna check your car. - At the end of the border on your
right there is the costumes office, where they are goanna stamped your Carnet de passage, you will have to ask for it,other wise they are not really concerned about it. It is not mandatory to have carnet de passage in Nepal.
Buy some beer right in the border and celebrate the entrance to Nepal!
Tips to make this dish a bit more digestible
- Is the most chillout border we had crossed. But always keep the alert on! Check the dates of your visas, and that all the stamps are in order.
- As the insurance is not mandatory we had driven all the time without it. Anyway is hard to believe that it can help in this country.
- In Bhimdatta, the first big town you find after the border, you can buy some SIM card, and find an ATM.
- Opening times from 6 am to
19 pm . 7 days a week. ( or at least it was like that on November 2018)
- We are holding a Spanish passport, so all this info is based on that (UE is mostly the same).
- Applied on the border.
- 1 hour need to get your visa done.
Dish introduction
More than a cooking dish is a take away one. You don’t even need to fire the cooker, just sit and wait for the food to come to your mouth. You are getting a-Visa on arrival.
Visa on arrival means you can show up at the border and right there you get your visa glued in your passport.
Ingredients
- Passport with validity of at least 6 months.
- 1 passport photo size
- 25$, 40$ or 100$ cash depends on how many days you are willing to stay.
- Address in Nepal, you just need to write it down, no need to book anything on this address.
- A pen to fill up a form they hand you at the embassy
Method
- Get yourself into the Nepal Border.
- Go to the immigration office you will find on the left side.
- Fill up the form they are gonna give you.
- Glue your picture on this form
- You can apply for 15 days Visa (25$), 30 days Visa (40$) or 90 days Visa (100$).
- Pay the visa fee cash in hand, better bring it exactly, they will give you a bad change.
- After no-much-time-waiting-Nepali-Time… you get your visa glued in your passport and you are good to enter the country.
- You can easily extend this visa once in the country.
Work in progress!!
Sorry about that;
If you want to know anything from this Visa let us know and we will provid you all the information we have!
😉
From Lahore (Pakistan) to Amristan (India).
Cooking time: 3 hours.
Difficulty: 2/5.
Dish introduction
This is a festive dish, full of competition and patriotism. The clash of two countries, with very similar cultures, taste and spices. Big ingredients, massive flags and the duck walking move as main taste.
The Whaga border is all about his evening closing ceremony. Big grandstands, massive flags, and showing off the uniforms. Every single evening since 1959 there has been a competition. In each side of each grandstand, the officers show who is capable of shouting for the longest time, playing the trumpet, looking bigger and lifting the leg high to step in the ground harder… any0way, this is just a show you must not miss, here we are talking about how to cross this border full of pride!
Ingredients
- Carnet de passage for both countries.
- Passports.
- Pakistan Visa not expired
- Indian Visa.
- Indian cash to pay the first toll road (65 rupees)
- No money need to pay anyone in the border. One guy will try to “help” you though ($). You don’t need any help.
Method
-1st step. Exiting Pakistan
- You will find, on the main road, a barrier. Just to say good morning and have a
quic look on your passport. Friendly people, be kind, you are leaving them behind, to go to the competitor country! - Then just a quick look with a mirror to make sure you don’t have any
Pakistany hanging under your car. - Drive 500m, pass one more barrier with friendly passport control, drive another 500m and before entering the main gate of the border, you need to turn left, to go to
te customs declaration. - The customs declaration is a building were you are gonna have all your stamps done, so take all the papers you have. They do ask quite a lot of information.
- Probably someone is gonna come to talk to you, just for self-
entreteiment . Before the real guy will take you to a little office and fill in your Carnet de Passage information in the big book! Then stamp you Carnet de passage and your passport for the vehicle exit information. - At this
point a guy might come to you, offer some help you don’t need, and inechange ask you money, or offer you to exchange money on his advantage! Don’t mind him, and tell him you have 0 cash. - Once this is done just outside this office and at the end of the hall, you find
he immigration desk. A little form to fill, they put your detailsin the computersistem . And you get your exit stamp. - You are done. Get your car and drive through the hole stadium. Just a quick passport control at the last big gate.
-2nd step. Welcome to India
- You will have to stop your car in the middle of the stadium. They have to write your details, the car ones and the Carnet de passage, and will give you, in exchange a paper that will allow you to get out of the border! Quite a good deal!
- Drive for some meters, still on the left side of the road. Little gate with a passport registration. And drive all the way to the big building.
- If it is not to full you can park the car right in front of the main entrance. A good metal detection check and you are in. The customs will take a picture of you, make you fill a form, and take your details. As well will give you a yellow form that you will have to give to the immigration.
- In the immigration office, they will fill at the book, your Carnet de passage info. They will ask you the yellow form and make you feel in another form about the Carnet!
- After a while, all the paperwork is gonna be done and you can produce to the car registration.
- They seem to be afraid of Pakistan, they are gonna check everything
of your car, with dogs, mirrors, and some police officers in your car. - If they don’t find anything suspicious you are good to go to this h
uge and lovely country.
Tips to make this dish a bit more digestible
- Do not leave Pakistan and enter to Inda without your Carnet de Passage stamped! You can lose all de deposit back in your country or wait for 7 years to get it back!
- Better try to exchange money in Lahore than in the border.
- We are holding a Spanish passport, so all this info is based on that (UE is mostly the same).
- Applied Visa in Iran (Theran).
- 3 days needed to get the transit visa.
Dish introduction
There are 2 main options to cook this dish;
The first and the most recommended one is to get this visa back home (we give you some tips at the end of the post).
The second one is to get a transit visa in Tehran which allows you to cross Pakistan in 14 days just from Iran.
We will resume the second recipe with the extra taste of entering via China and how to extend this visa in two different ways.
Ingredients
- Passport with validity of at least 6 months and 2 empty pages.
- Passport photocopy with every single page with any visa!
- 1 passport photo size.
- Letter of no objection, as they do not trust the validity of your passport you have to go to your own embassy in Tehran and ask for a letter of no objection; It’s just a simple paper confirming the validity of your passport from your embassy, it shouldn’t take more than one day.
- 12$ cash to pay at the bank.
- An exit visa in your passport of any country that borders Pakistan but Iran (So China or India), remember you are asking for a transit visa, so you need to exit Pakistan, so they ask for this visa. Doesn’t count if you have an E-visa, they ask for a printed visa in your passport.
- A pen to fill up a form they hand you at the embassy.
- Pakistan Embassy location (35°42′48.21″N 51°23′05.85″E).
- Bank location (They will provide it to you).
- Opening hours; Early morning with no fix schedule. After 14h close. Thursday and Fridays close.
Method
- Once you get all the ingredients in order, it is a simple dish.
- Show up at the embassy early morning though you never know when they are gonna attend you.
- Fill up all the info they give you and hand to them all the ingredients you have.
- Go to the bank to pay 12$ cash.
- Wait for 3 days (We hurry them a bit and they made it the same day).
- There you go! Your transit visa for Pakistan is ready. This means you need to go from one country to another through Pakistan. You cannot go back to the same country you came from on a transit visa.
- Theoricly this visa just allowed you to cross from Iran, but we manage to do it from China with no problem at all.
- ONCE IN THE COUNTRY, YOU CAN EASILY EXTEND YOUR VISA;
1ST Option and the most common one it to go to Directorate General Immigration and Passport Headquarter in Islamabad (33º41'11.1"N, 73º02'51.47"E), take a better look at this website.
2n option if the first one for some reason didn't work (like it happened to us due a long bank holiday), is to get an EXIR PERMIT form the Section Visa Officer named Zurghan Shehzad in Ministry of Interior (33º44'02.79"N73º05'39.2E"), it will definitely help if you tell him you love Barcelona, you have lived there or your uncle is from there. He is crazy about Barcelona and thanks to that he decided to help us.
Tips to make this dish a bit more digestible
- This is our story, it may change
fromembassy to embassy, day to day, nationality to nationality… So double check all this info. For this visa, we were using the useful information of Caravanistan. - The guy in the embassy is really friendly and willing to help within the legality. The ambassador is also a fan of backpackers. He told us to use this visa to cross from China though it is not allowed. “People from the border wouldn’t know this law,” He said.
- Try to get in touch with actual travellers in forums and real life. It’s a huge community ready to help. There are lots of forums on the internet.
- Be there before opening to avoid a queue.
- You don’t need to go suit up but try to avoid shorts and flip-flops. The first impression might help for any issue you could face.
Some tips to do this visa back home
- They will probably issue 30 days visa with 1-year validity.
This means you have to enter the country within 1 year from receiving it. So, you can enter the day before the visa expires, and then still enjoy Pakistan for 30 days and easily extended in Islamabad or Lahore. - For this visa you need
a LOI (Letter of Invitation), we invite you to contact our friend Nazim from Pakistan. He is the coolest guy ever and will issue free LOI to everyone how asks him. - We heard you cannot just send your passport to the embassy, you need to go by yourself, so it could be quite
anoying if you are already on the road (Like wewhere ). Theneather you fly back or you try ourrecipie on Transit visa in Teheran.
