I am trying to find a stronger descriptive word than “harrowing”, but nothing quite describes the second bus journey I took today.
It all started well enough at 5.30am (an insignificant time for those with jetlag, as I was already up at midnight after going to bed at 6pm Kathmandu time!)… Dorchi came to collect me and fed me fried eggs and toast at the little cafe he runs with his wife by Kathmandu bus station when he is not sherpa-ing. Then the young porter called Syange joined us and we worked out how to collate all the gear into manageable packages that would fit into his carrying basket.
Having located the correct bus for Bhulbhule, recognisable by the slogan “Love is Life” on its bumper and the teenage assistant conductor clambering about on its roof strapping down backpacks and supplies, we settled in for a 7 to 9 hour drive westwards. A large margin is given in the transit time because, well, this is Nepal, and stuff happens!
I promptly regretted being a bit tall by this country’s standards, as I could barely squeeze into the seat. If I have knee ache tomorrow, it will have nothing to do with trekking, but good old bus seat bashing!
At lunch time, the one-menu-fits-all (as long as you like spicy curry dal bhat!) at the roadside diner sent me running for my freeze-dried rations, and once it had been mixed with boiling water and left to cook in its pouch for 10min, it was a surprisingly tasty lasagna with bolognese! Magic! At this stage, however, Dorchi was wondering what I DO eat, as so much of the staple diet in Nepal is incompatible with my tastebuds…
Moving swiftly on (in time, unrerlated to speed of bus!), I discovered that sitting by any open window in a moving vehice in Nepal absolutely covers one with dust. I had so much dust in my eyes that it looked like the Sandman had dumped his year’s supply on me! I will save you the list of orifices the dust also entered, except to say that the black bogies and crunch between my teeth (bogies NOT between teeth!) only ceased about 7 hours later, when I washed them down with dinner.
But none of that came even close to “harrowing” or a stronger word from the same semantic direction. The second bus journey fromn Bhulbhule to Syange makes most other stuff fade into insignificance…
We were supposed to get a jeep tomorrow for that stage, but Dorchi found out there are no jeeps running tomorrow, so we took a chance and hailed down the next bus to pass, which turned out to be the last of the day going to Syange (which is coincidentally the name of the young porter too). We were around 44 people, 3 chickens and innumerable bags, rucksacks, boxes, supply sacks, extra large crisp packets and so forth all quite literally sitting on top of each other in a bus meant to carry no more than 24 adults. And this motley sardine crew were going up a track that would test a tractor on a good day, with no railing between the eroding edge of the road and the 100m drop into a ravine right by it. Even the locals let out little squeaks of anxiety as the bus wobbled through streams, potholes bigger than the road was wide, and past other vehicles where there was barely room for one! I got to test the “Am I ready to die today?” question many times, and just hoped it would not be a long, painful death at the bottom of the ravine. With a chicken on my head.
The funny thing is that, having said all that, I actually quite enjoyed it! The more I mumbled to myself “This is insane!”, the more it made me smile. The chicken next to me was resting its head in the hair of a young girl, who in turn was resting her head on a lady’s lap. None of them knew each other! The open bus door on my other side was lined with a row of fists trying to keep hold of something and I couldn’t quite see or feel which hand was mine anymore. It’s like the human body is common property in Nepal – there is no sense of personal space. The downside is that no one thinks twice about poking, prodding and sitting half on top of you, but the lovely upside is that there is ALWAYS room for one more on the bus!
Tomorrow, it will be two-leg drive only, and Dorchi promises that there will be as palatable food as I had this evening at the Waterfall Lodge. I feel I can trust him, not least because he is actually a Sherpa, which is an ethic group in Nepal that the word “sherpa” comes from. Not all sherpas are Sherpas, but Dorchi is so much Sherpa that it is even his family name!
The big question is whether the torrential downpour that started this evening marks the beginning of the rainy season, and I have two weeks of rather wet walking ahead…
