The Bus Journey

The long journey up to Yaphu began at the completely incomprehensible Kathmandu Bus Terminal. There are no numbers on the buses, or signs to tell you where the several thousand buses will be heading that day. People seemingly pile onto these buses and off they go to some unknown destination. If we had gone alone, we´d probably still we wandering around now or having found ourselves on the 5 day non'stop express bus to Tibet. Thankfully, we had our Sherpa guide Petemba with us. Keep close behind we wove our way through the crowds to our ´VIP' seats he had booked for us on our night bus to Dharan. VIP is one way to describe them. Cramped and with nothing stopping you flying through the windscreen is another. But they were still miles better then the other seats!  When the bus finally left it´s bay, it took us another 2 hours just to leave Kathmandu as we seemed to have to stop at every junction to allow small children to flog us the same crisps and water they´d tried to flog us half an hour previously.
This was not our first experience on Nepalese roads, so we sort of knew what to expect. Road rules in Nepal are loosly followed at best. Our bus driver seemed to think that it was quite alright to overtake 10 lorries at once on a blind bend with a cliff beneath us as long as he beeped his horn very loudly first. Apparently the nepalese also drive on the left hand side of the road. Pretty sure our driver spent most of the journey not on this side. But we arrived safely (if not a little shaken) in Dharan the next morning after numerous lengthy stops to repair the bus, eat or just have a chat. We were then quickly pushed onto a local bus, now we thought that this journey would be a nice, quick scenic rumble up the hill. 10 hours later. We realised we were a little off the mark. The road was bumpy, muddy, slippery, wet and steep. What a lovely combination. We spent most of the journey ´'enjoying' the various horns the driver generated on his ´´digital horn generator´´. They were all appalling.

We eventually arrived in the clouds (and rain) in Chainpur where we took a room in a small hotel and went to bed at 7.30pm in preparation for the trek!

xx