A quick thinking pensioner traveling on a trekking trip in the Himalayas used her bus pass to get through a check point on the Indo-Nepal border.
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Seventy-two year old Helen Carter, an avid adventure sports enthusiast, was part of an organized trekking group tour to India. The group was based in the Indian hill station of Darjeeling from where members took long walking trips. On the day of the trek which took group members close to the Nepalese border, guards at an isolated post asked them to produce their passports. Carter, who’d left her passport behind at the trekking lodge, fished out her concessionary bus pass, the one she uses to travel between Totnes where she lives, and Plymouth. All it contains is a photo of the cheerful looking Carter, her name written out in hand, and “Devon Wide Travel Pass” written on it.
It worked like a charm. The guards pored over it and let her through. To top it off, it worked a total of three times!
Perhaps the guards just figured a seventy-two year old grandmother was an unlikely terror suspect?