Road Trip to Pokhara

Well what a day this turned out to be! We were up at 5.45am as we had to be at the bus stop by 6.30am. We found the bus stop with the help of a street seller who then wanted to rip us off for a bottle of pop. Luckily we had managed to get seats near the front as these buses don’t come with air conditioning. The bus isn’t a full size bus which we were very pleased about having seen the roads on the way to Kathmandu. Everything started off well - the journey was supposed to take about 7 hours including stops for breakfast and lunch. By 8am though, we hadn’t even left Kathmandu as the traffic was so heavy, we had to stop for fuel, let people on, let people off... at least we got to see more of the city. The road out of the city we are pleased to say, was in much better condition than the one we arrived on, proper, wide, tarmac roads without great pieces missing. The scenery was stunning. Still mountainous but without the dramatic heights of the north. It’s still the Himalayas but the skyline is definitely not as high here. We saw lots of villages along the way including the one we stopped at for breakfast. Napali life has the most beautiful backdrop but it does not disguise the hard life these people have. It got to about 11.30am and getting quite hot, when we turned a corner on the mountain road, to see and endless queue of buses and lorries stretched out in front of us. We pulled up behind the bus in front of us and waited. And waited. And waited. We seem to be getting good at waiting in Nepal! At least the canny villagers saw our plight and came up to the buses armed with cold drinks, ice-cream, fresh coconut, fruit and chocolate. Bryan decided to go for a walk and stretch his legs and walked the 3km passed all the queued up traffic into the village. There he found a group of protesters - peaceful ones - blocking the main junction in the centre of the village. It looked like they were huddled together having a big chat! Well 3 hours later and we hadn’t moved an inch and our driver was getting more and more impatient. So despite the queues he put his foot down and passed loads of trucks and buses. This was a good plan except he wouldn’t wait for any of the people who got off for a walk. They had to run like mad to catch up and only managed to because the driver had to stop as buses coming the other way had decided to do the same thing. Well it still took best part of an hour but he managed to get us through the queues and into the village. By now the protesters had gone but the scene was chaotic as 4 roads converged at the cross road in the middle of the village and traffic was trying to get through from every direction. He got us on our way - 4 hours it took - and we arrived at a roadside restaurant for lunch at about 4pm. It was a beautiful setting but we had no time to admire it as the driver gave us 15 minutes only for food and drink. The rest of the journey was thankfully not as eventful and we did have the stunning scenery to admire on the way. The thing about travelling is that we have no sense of urgency anymore. So when these things happen we just sit back and go with the flow. Everyone else can get stressed about being late but to us it’s all part of the experience I wonder if we will be the same when we get back to England and get stuck on the M4 at Reading!! We finally arrived at Pokhara at 6pm - 12 hours after we set out. The weather had been hot and beautiful all day so guess what happened as soon as we stepped off the bus? Yes it started to rain....perfect timing!!!