When Cows Attack and Immigration Office Migrations

At what point in time individuals of any given country became the property of their respective government I'm not entirely sure, but the paperwork involved in staying outside the geographical confines of the place you were born is a headache it seems for everyone on the planet. Still to avoid further headaches it's a game we all it seems have to play. So while walking up toward the grocery store other day I was texting back and forth with my Lawyer about getting an extension to my visa. Walking and texting in Nepal can be a bit challenging, as there are very rarely sidewalks, there are many sink holes, occasionally cow dung, uneven pavement and other traps can be underfoot. The road is often in use by pedestrians, cars, trucks, mopeds, motorcycles, fruit vendors, ice cream carts, wandering cows, and street dogs...it can be a congested place. At one point I was walking along the side of the road and had to move past a bull and a few cows on the side of the road, oncoming traffic demanded that I walk within about a foot or two of them.

Now normally cows, even bulls here are quite docile- calm as Hindu cows. In all my time here I've never seen one do anything rash, and people often touch them and then touch there head as they walk by as the cow is considered holy. Well this bull, for what ever reason, was not a fan of me and while walking by he decided that he'd put his horns into my arm...which kind of hurt and got my attention in a hurry. Now looking over at the bull I could see that he still wasn't happy with me and decided to come at me again, throwing me out into oncoming traffic. The guy driving the car that was coming toward me had a look of terror on him, I think he thought the bull was going to continue to come after me, but I walked out of traffic, and on my way as if nothing had happened, and I had no more trouble from the bull. Still it was a very odd experience, and I may avoid walking too close to those things in the future. Once it kind of dawned on me what had just happened I got quite a laugh out of it. These aren't the kind of things that seem only a little strange here, but when I tell people back home it sounds like I'm on another planet.



So with the cows out of the way I could get back to sorting out my visa issues. The really good news is that with the restaurant Kim and I will finally have a good legitimate business visa that should be sustainable, no more signing up for classes for student visas and such. Of course this doesn't happen overnight though, and so with my current tourist visa expiring I needed an extension to get me through until the business visa is finished. Now over the time I've been here I've become familiar with where the immigration office is, as I've had to make several trips over there for various extensions and paperwork. It seems however that in the middle of Nepal Tourism Year without any notice, or signage, or explanation the Immigration office moved.

Now luckily I had heard about this via a discussion group (KTM group linked on the right hand side of the page) and had a vague idea of where it was thanks to a few people who had been left to wander around to find it. The new office isn't too hard to find if you know roughly where it is, but if you go wandering around where it was, you're going to be out of luck. The new office is located North, North-East of Singha Durbar. take the first road north of that building heading east, and then when the road splits follow it north up hill and the new office is on the right. I'm including a map for those poor people who might be looking for it. I fear that many people that are navigating via a Lonely Planet book will be in trouble if they go looking for a visa extension.

The new office is just north-east of Singha Durbar

So if you're looking for the new office and searching for its location via Google or something, I hope this helps.