Travel in China is relatively easy in terms of visas and bureaucracy – except if you're traveling to Tibet. Parts of the Tibetan Autonomous Region are completely off limits to foreigners, independent travel is not permitted, and groups need to be accompanied by local Chinese guides. To enter China/Tibet from Nepal we needed to apply for a group visa instead of obtaining individual Chinese visas beforehand. So after our Sunday morning group meeting for the tour with Dragoman we all went over to the travel agency Dragoman uses to expedite acquiring such a visa to fill out the necessary paperwork and hand in out passports.

Chinese bureaucracy moves slowly, so the visa process would take a few days, delaying when we could enter China until the group visa had been issued and we received back our passports (brought to us along the way by taxi by the agency) . That meant three night in Nepal before we could cross into China.

The next day we traveled eastwards a short distance to Dhulikhel, an Ethnic Newari town on a ridge at the edge of the Kathmandu Valley, to have some time to relax, explore the village, and essentially to kill some time. Our guesthouse supposedly has fantastic views towards Mount Everest and the other peaks of the Everest region, but conditions were too hazy to see any mountains.

The next morning was onwards to The Last Resort, first dropping down steep switchbacks to the Bhote Kosi River valley and then on the Arniko Highway upwards along the river valley for several hours. Although the distance was not great, the appalling state of roads in Nepal made for a half day trip.

With a spectacular location at a gorge in the river valley, Last Resort is a thrill seeker’s paradise specializing in bungee jumps, a giant swing, and such other adrenaline sports as canyoning and white water rafting . Our accommo for two nights was in large tents with beds with meals buffet style in an open air dining area. I crossed many suspension bridges on my two treks in Langtang and Annapurna, but none of them was as scary as the one I had to take to get across the gorge to Last Resort, around 180 meters or 600 feet above the river.

The suspension bridge is also where bungee jumpers and canyon swingers take off. There are bungee jumps around the world but Last Resort’s canyon swing seemed unique. Instead of a dive straight down with the bungee cord attached at the takeoff point, the swing rope is attached to a rope over the canyon some distance forward from the jumper. After the adventurer steps or jumps off, she quickly start moving horizontally at an extreme speed in the gorge, back and forth until gravity slows her down. The cost for bungees and swings was about $100 a pop with package discounts for multiple jumps. There’s no way I’d do either, but this was actually the first place I’ve ever seen bungee jumping take place.

Our group visa and passports arrived on time. We left early on the morning of Day 5 for the border post at Kodari, a distance of only about 15 km but one that again took way longer than expected. Border crossings are always an annoyance, but this one was especially bad. It took most of the day for Sura (the truck) to get through and get all her Chinese customs forms in order, so there was a lot of wait and do nothing in a dusty border town.