Trip to Nepal
October 2006
Day 3 - On the Way to Besisehar
I had some forebodings about this day. It was the first time in six years that a certain Hindu holiday was occurring during a truce period between the government and the Maoists. As I write this, it looks like a permanent end to hostilities may have arrived. One facet of this holiday is that Kathmandu citizens get on a bus and head back to their villages to celebrate. I had decided to take a locals bus out to Besisehar, the beginning of the trek, when asked two days before. The locals bus was 180Rs ($2.40USD), the tourist bus was 300Rs ($4.20USD), so it wasn't much difference price-wise. I thought it would be more of an interesting cultural experience, and I guess it was. But the six hour bus ride lasted some twelve hours.
At 6:20am, my guide/porter, Ram, came by my guest house to pick me up; we got a cab and headed out to the Kathmandu public bus park. After giving up in a traffic jam, we headed on foot for the last half mile. The bus park was very large and had buses leaving Kathmandu for the entire country. The air was full of kerosene and it was hard to breathe; I wished I had brought a breathing mask. Our bus was ready at 8am, and we had to run to catch it before it disappeared.
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Buses being filled up, both inside and on top. Some buses had a conductor for the inside part and the top part. There really is no good seat for a ride of more than an hour or two. |
I had a relatively good seat - I guess they figured a Westerner wasn't going to last with a normal seat. Ram was sitting on a bench with no back for ten hours. I had a seat with my knees pushed up against the seat in front, a back that was straight up, on a foam seat on top of plywood. Or so it felt. The ride was traffic jams for hours, then slowly through the countryside. Occasional "nature calls" breaks and a break for lunch - daal bhat (rice and lentils) for everyone. This I found rather sad - Ram said that he eats two meals of daal bhat every day of his life. Monotonous, I asked? No, he replied. But it wasn't just him - it was the meal given to all the guides and porters during the trek.
After riding a tourist bus later, I don't think it was a bad decision; there just was no good decision. And I did get a feel for the locals that I wouldn't have gotten in a bus with other tourists. I was the only non-Nepali on the bus.
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Going up a hill, the
engine died and the bus started rolling backwards. When the driver
put on the brakes, they failed to work and he steered the bus into the
rocky hillside. The conductor refused to return anyone's money, even though the bus wasn't going anywhere under its own power, and he was chased up this hill into another crowd. Ram (the guy in the bottom right of the picture in the NY Yankees baseball cap) and I got on another bus and continued on for two more hours. This bus was bigger and better. It had two Christian Nepali girls practicing choir music, so was entertaining. |
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Stop for lunch on the way to Besisehar |
My lovely room in the Mountainview Hotel |
The Hotel by morning - we arrived after dark last night |