Sunauli Border Crossing from Nepal to India
After chasing rhinos on the back of an elephant in Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, our plan was to find transportation from Nepal to India. We were eager to experience the holy city of Varanasi and its ancient Ghats that rest on the shores of the sacred Ganges River.
We quickly learned that it would be a confusing task that required patience, having spent an entire day and night taking various methods of transportation, including two taxis, three rickshaws, three buses and an overnight train.
This photo was taken at Sunauli, the India-Nepal border crossing located north of Gorakhpur in eastern India. After crossing into India from Nepal without so much as a “hello”, we continued down the dusty road until we found a small, open-aired retail storefront with an inconspicuous sign that read “Immigration”. It was not the establishment one would expect to find when looking for a government building – but that’s the charm of India.
We entered the room and approached the lone wooden table, greeted by a friendly man wearing a dated USA Olympic tracksuit from the 80’s. He was helpful, stamping our passports and pointing us in the right direction to find the bus from Sunauli to Gorakhpur. It was a fairly simple process because we had already secured our visas ahead of time, though most people just wandered across the border without being questioned by anyone.
While inside the seemingly makeshift “Immigration Office”, I turned around and snapped this photo. It does a good job showcasing the rural nature of this puzzling border crossing.
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Do you have an interesting border crossing story?
Share your experience in the comments section below!
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That’s how borders should be. Meaningless. 🙂
I’m not entirely sure I agree, but I get your point from a human perspective. Just not sure how this world would operate without countries?
Wow, would have never thought this to be a border crossing!
That’s what we thought when we arrived! “Are we in the right place?”
Looks like an unusual crossing! The Botswana/Zambia border crossing was the most interesting one I’ve seen. It was filled with cargo trucks waiting (seemingly) days to get through. As tourists, we cut the massive line of vehicles and were stamped in.
Sounds interesting. We have yet to land cross in Afica – hopefully South Africa is in our future! 😉
Oh yeah – totally got yelled at by some sketchy guys going from Peru into Ecuador, they snatched our passports out of my hand and said we had to pay for an “Ecuadorian Visa”. Pete was yelling at them: “No pagamos nada!” until they finally gave them back and walked away. Crazy!
Yikes – sounds sketchy!
I hate handing over my passport in foreign countries when I can’t speak the language and don’t know what’s going on.
Who would have guessed that it is sooo easy to cross a border in Asia? I can remember my border crossing from Thailand to Cambodia, which took soooo long. There were no complications, but they had a long line of “officers”. One for looking at you, one for taking your passport, one for getting your passport to the next person, one for opening the passport, one for getting the passport to the next person, one for looking at the picture…
You know what I’m talking about. 🙂 But we’ve made it!
Haha… I know exactly what you’re talking about Melvin.
We land crossed from Cambodia to Thailand also, it was quite the experience, amplified by the fact that I caught a nasty virus or bacteria that had me in cold sweats!
Actually its fairly easy to cross borders between India and Nepal, its more of a porous border. But I guess for a non-Indian, non-Nepali things might not be as easy. I am glad your experience wasn’t that bad…
Agreed – it was fairly easy to cross the border. The difficult task was getting to and from the border! 😉
Hey, guys! I’m Canadian too 🙂 I just found your site and I’m adding you to my blog roll. You seem to have a wealth of info on your site and some very awesome photos from your RTW travels! I will be stalking your site and catching up with your past posts!
-Jen Laceda
Thanks for stopping by Jen – welcome! 😉
When i crossed from Huay Xai in Laos into the Chiang Khong in Thailand, the “immigration office” was a folded table and metal chair underneath a beach umbrella. =)
Then there was that time when I did a border crossing from Ethiopia’s Afar region into Djibouti. We had to hitchhike on a lorry, and the stoned on qat Djibouti officials made me empty my backpack, made comments about us being terrorist wannabes because we had Somaliland visas on our passports. They were obviously waiting for a bribe (qat money) to let us pass through quickly, but nah, we had all day =)
Some interesting experiences for sure!
Immigration office under a beach umbrella – I love it!
You are braver than I! I am always wary of border crossings, and prefer to fly when possible… also, Varanasi was possibly the most amazing part of my trip to India. I fell completely in love with it — you?
We really liked Varanasi. It was our first experience in India, so you can imagine the culture shock we received on that first day! But it grew on us quickly and has remained a very special experience for us
Oh my! This is definitely a pretty straightforward crossing as borders go, but the difference between the two countries, when you’re going from the Nepal side…I’ve done it twice now, once in the early a.m when there was no one around and once in the early afternoon and each time it’s a “toto, we’re not in kansas anymore” experience!
And Gorakhpur…!! I got stuck there and spent a night in a hotel opposite the train station. They rented rooms by the hour. Enough said!!
We almost got stuck in Gorakhpur – the train was several hours late and it was getting very late. In hindsight, it really wasn’t that big of a deal, but the combination of several small confusions led to one challenging day of travel!
Umm… Actually not only the borders look like this in India, every city I have been in the Rajasthan had a pretty similar look 🙂
Yeah, it’s certainly not the cleanest place in the world! 😉
Wow, if only all borders were like that! haha too bad it’s not the same story for the rest of India’s borders.. /:
That sounds like a pretty crazy journey with all those transport-changes!
Yes – it was a confusing and frustrating day. It all worked out and we were able to communicate with locals to point us in the right direction. But things don’t typically run smoothly India!
hi…when u went to india ???
Very interesting.
But Sunauli isn’t on Google Maps.
Can you show a link to a map with Sunauli on it ?
It’s doubtful.
Hi,
Nepal and India had an open border policy since long. We don’t need visa or special permission to go from one place to the other.
🙂
Hi! I am actually planning to cross Sunauli border from Nepal in a few days.. does anyone here knows if I can actually obtain visa on arrival on that immigration office? In this story it seems like the immigration officer there only has a stamp ready and nothing else. I have already emailed indian immigration but no one replied to me yet. 🙁 hope anyone can help. Also if anyone wanna joing me with my trip to India?