SONAULI, Nepal - This is the easiest border I've ever crossed.
The border between Canada and the United States is more guarded. There most people are in cars, and the queues can be two hours long. The last time I went across, during my trip from Kansas back to New York (blogged here, although those entries are currently hidden. Someday I'll get around to editing them.), a suspicious American customs officer poked around my trunk for five minutes, looking at worn socks and empty Cool Ranch Dorito bags that made it hard to close.
He waved me through, but shot a disapproving looked that suggested he'd phone my mother to express his disgust with my dirty automobile. Thankfully he didn't have the number.
Here the bus deposits its cargo a couple hundred meters from the Indian gate. The border town is a one-street affair, a wide unpaved avenue with puddles of stagnant water leftover from yesterday's monsoon dumping.
The end of India is a large cream colored arch with a seated Buddha near the keystone. Just in front of it, on the side of the road is a small, hand-painted sign requesting foreigners to come into a small enclave and have their passports stamped.
Yes, it is requested. There is no barbed wire, drug sniffing dogs, bomb detectors or snipers on rooftops, only a man offering some suggestions about the border. Don't bring 500 rupee notes into Nepal, they're illegal there, and you'll want to have a passport photo, you need one for the visa on the other side of the arrival. He quickly makes a copy of my creepy grin in my passport picture for five rupees.
Stamp, stamp, stamp and I'm finished at the Indian side. I walk under the arch, leave India, cross a ten-meter strip of No Man's Land filled with grazing bulls and empty plastic bags, and then cross a much smaller taupe-colored arched, and I'm in Nepal.
The border post here is also off the main line of sight, down a path on the right side of the street. Indians and Nepalis pass without entering, they can travel the border freely if they leave by nightfall. I went to the post, where I was handed a short form and a blue pen.
I completed the form, handed the man $30 for a three month visa and was legally in Nepal. The man handed my passport to a middle-aged woman with a bindi and a long, black dress. She wrote some numbers down in a logbook and handed me my passport.
"Welcome to Nepal!" she said.
That's the first time someone's ever welcomed me to their country, and to her credit I think she meant it.
