Passage to India - thanks to senior bus pass

LONDON: A globe-trotting grandmother from UK crossed a Himalayan border checkpoint between India and Nepal using her pensioner's bus pass.
   
Helen Carter, 72-year-old, from Churchstow, south Devon, set off on an arduous trek in the mountains, having left her passport behind at her hotel in Darjeeling.
    
But the Devon-wide travel pass, bearing a March 31, 2008, expiry date, came to her rescue and allowed her to criss-cross between India and Nepal four times.
    
The pass usually gives her free travel on trips to less exotic places such as Plymouth and Totnes.
    
"When I showed the pass, the border guard smiled and waved me through. We had to cross the border three more times during the trek and the bus pass worked every time, although I had to fill in a form," Mrs Carter told The Sunday Telegraph.
    
Carter was on an organised group trip to the region, but left her husband, Roy, also in his seventies, at home in England.
    
The group walked for long distances through the area every day from the base at a trekking lodge near Darjeeling, on the Indian side of the border. On the day of the border trip, she was not told to pack her passport and left it safe at the lodge.

The pensioner is a veteran of seven treks to Nepal, as well as Tibet, Peru, Ethiopia, Mexico and Morocco.
    
"Every pensioner should try it - but do not forget that bus pass," she said.