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Resuming its eastward journey at Pathlaya, the Mahendra Highway initially cuts through extensive forest alternating with farmland. Timber and sugar are important exports of this area. Sugar cane, which is harvested in winter with the help of Indian migrant labourers, is processed by numerous small factories and a couple of big ones visible from the road. After 55km the highway crosses the Bagmati River , its volume here about ten times bigger (and cleaner, thanks to dilution) than in the Kathmandu Valley. This section of the Mahendra Highway was originally constructed with Soviet assistance, which explains the monumental road signs and bus shelters. East of the turn-off for Janakpur at Dhalkebar, the highway enters more settled country, and things become increasingly Indian. For a long stretch after Lahan, a nondescript market town, there's very little to remind you that you're in Nepal. Cyclists passing through here often complain of being stared at by locals. The landscape changes markedly at the Sapt Koshi , Nepal's biggest river. Crossing the Koshi Barrage - not a dam, but a network of dykes and flood-control gates - you can look in amazement at the immense body of water that squeezes through here before fanning out again into the shimmering haze of India. Reaching the far side, the highway bends north and runs parallel to a disused railway: keep an eye out for the rusty old rolling stock which, until the railway tracks were severed in a 1988 earthquake, hauled rubble to build up the seven- to ten-metre embankments that keep the Sapt Koshi in check during the monsoon. The landscape is particularly flat and featureless east of the Sapt Koshi to Itahari , a major junction town and the turning for Biratnagar and Dharan. For its final and smoothest leg, to the border at Kakarbhitta, the Mahendra Highway traverses the more picturesque districts of Morang and Jhapa . Once renowned for its virulent malaria, Morang's forest has now been almost entirely cleared and the land homesteaded by immigrants from the hills; the half-timbered houses are the work of transplanted Limbus. Jhapa, further east, has had a somewhat longer history of settlement, and is known for tea cultivation: its shaded plantations are a reminder that Darjeeling is barely 50km away as the crow flies, and Ilam, Nepal's prize tea-growing region, sits in the hills just north of here. Though the roadside bazaars are monotonously similar in this area, the countryside is idyllic: banana trees and thatched-roof houses on stilts (one strategy for dealing with heavy monsoon rains) give it a classically Asian look.
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