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Note from Jonah: This is the continuation of a photo series from the Great Himalayan Mountain Range. The photos document a journey by car, foot, boat, plane and elephant from Tibet to Nepal.

After passing Chinese border control, entering Nepal on foot is about as easy as crossing the street in your home town.

After the “no-man’s land bridge” you end up on a small street on the side of a cliff. Mist, fog and precipitation make the entire town feel somewhat like Rivendale, but with a much smaller GDP and more trash (and no Liv Taylor).

Instantly, you know you are in a different country. In many border areas, populations will speak multiple languages and there will be a bit of a culturally gray area. However, upon entering Nepal, Mandarin becomes useless (although, its not always entirely helpful in Tibet either). Visually speaking — people simply look different. They dress different. They are eating different foods and listening to different musics — you are clearly in a different country.

The reason why this is strange is, Tibet is just across this very narrow canyon. Literally within 200 feet of an enormous crack in the ground people are completely different. The edge of the Himalayan apparently makes a distinct political and cultural line — eliminating some of the culturally gray area.

While there is a large Buddhist population in Nepal, about 80 percent of the country is Hindu. Visually, it looks more like the Western conception of India rather than Tibet or China. The language sounds something similar to Tibetan or Mongolian, but still, distinctly different.

If I had not intended to get a visa to enter Nepal, I could have just walked into the country and gone about my business (although I’m not sure what would have happened upon exit). However, a man signaled with his head and directed me toward a small room where you can buy a visa for about $25-30 for 30 days.

Walking back outside on the street, I looked for a ride to Kathmandu. While looking, the first Nepalese word I heard was “Namaste.”

This is one word we all know — “Namaste.” Embarrassingly enough, I didn’t know this word came from Nepal (it is also used in India). I had associated it with hippies, the 60’s and Lost. I also didn’t know that Nepal was never colonized – making it the first place in the world (outside of Europe) I have ever been that was not some type of colony or occupied territory.

This makes Nepal much different than a lot of its surrounding areas. Their culture has been existing (non necessarily peacefully) for a very long period of time without foreign occupation, although there are certainly some land disputes with bordering nations. Nonetheless, the Nepalese are a mixture of Buddhists, Hindi, Islamic and Newari peoples, to name a few.

And then came the hippies. Nepal was a mecca for hippies in the 1960s and 1970s looking to escape the commercialism of the West. Their presence and stench is still there.

It took all of 20 seconds to find a man with a car willing to drive me to Kathmandu. Although Kathmandu is only about a 4 hour ride from the border, this trip took about 7 hours after becoming stuck in a landslide.

I had read this was common in Nepal; however, it was funny to experience it within 30 minutes of entering the country. What was more interesting was how everyone on the extremely narrow road on the side of a cliff reacted … they didn’t.

It was so normal that no one really reacted. People left their cars where the fate of traffic had decided and walked outside to sit, eat, smoke, pee, fight, watch and just about anything else you could think of doing. Many people gave up on their rides and took off walking down the dirt road, many barefoot.

I watched as a heavy machinery came in and tried to move the dirt to allow cars to pass, only for cars to get stuck over and over again.

After a good bit, we were free and headed toward the Kathmandu Valley dropping 3,820 meters in elevation from Tong-la to the city. In my car was a 21-year-old male, professional dancer who liked Michael Jackson, two woman who chatted like they were old friends the entire ride, but were actually strangers and the driver, who looked about 14 years old driving a massive four-wheel drive car. It kind of reminded me of a 4-year-old driving a big wheels.

There’s nothing like getting stuck on the side of a cliff with a bunch of strangers in the middle of nowhere to make you understand that it is this odd place, that is actually the destination.

Road Trip on the Himalayan Shelf: If you’re just joining now, here’s what you’ve missed:

1. Road trip on the Himalayan Shelf
2. Lhasa: City of Sunlight, City in the Sky
3. In Tibet, People’s Liberation Army (mostly) out of site, but not out of mind
4. Attn: Crayola — a new color for you — Tibetan Blue
5. Tibetan Cloudscapes
6. Tibetan Prayer Flags Littering Roof of the World
7. Should you pay for photos? The ethics of travel photography
8. 29 Minutes and 15 Seconds on Mount Everest
9. Desertification stretching from Inner Mongolia to Tibet
10. ‘The journey not the arrival matters’
11. Namaste and welcome to Nepal
12. Kathmandu: The greatest place on earth to get lost
13. Kathmandu: Full of mystery, culture, history — and trash
14. ‘A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles’
15. Who has the strongest necks in the world?
16. Hey hey, they’re some monkeys
17. After the Himalayan: The Terai
18. Watch where you step: Chitwan National Park
19. At the end of the road: Pokhara
20. Final Destination 8 (in 3D): The luckiest travelers in the world
21. Tibet to Nepal: ‘The Journey Not the Arrival Matters’