Nepal Day 12 & 13: "Nepal"

Nepal Day 12 & 13: "Nepal"

Sorry for skipping a day but Ben and I were enjoying the  fun filled world of chicken buses. We had decided to go north to Nepal and enjoy some cooler weather and beautiful mountain ranges. Only, because Nepal is just recently out of turmoil they do not have good transportation. We opted for an advertised 16 hour bus trip up to Kathmandu which turned out to be a 24 hour chicken bus with 20 min stops every 30mins. There was no A/C, the roads were horrendous (I will never complain about road construction again).

The pot holes were as broad and deep as canyons, giant semis everywhere and when they broke down, they did so in the center of the roads. There were remnants of old catastrophic crashes, again left in the middle of the road way, probably as a casual reminder to those currently alive and driving.   This topped my list of worst bus rides ever. The seats were designed for 5 foot people, everyone on the bus wanted to play their own music and did so with there cell phones, all of the cars on the road had air horns. When we would stop they flipped on high beam overhead lights and made sure everyone was up. I had no place to rest my head and at one point dozed off while seat and almost broke my nose on the chair in front of me when we slammed on the breaks to avoid a semi and not skid off the side of the mountain. It was a common occurrence to suddenly jolt awake and elbow someone in the face or ribs. I cannot stress enough how "fun" 24 hours on one of these buses is. Also it rained and soaked us halfway through. Ugh. But! And far more importantly! We are in freak'n Nepal!!! Cool weather, nice people, and white water rafting awaits. 

Today we arrived at 4 am very groggily made our way to the hotel area and woke up some poor inn keeper by shouting through a gate. He was very kind, as all the ATMs were still closed and he told us to "go to sleep, we'll handle all this in the morning." Ben and I nearly cried. We slept in till 11am had some lunch and booked our rafting trip for tomorrow.   So excited. Sadly, Kathmandu doesn't have much to offer other than good lassi and the cool ex-pat Indian staying at our hotel. We did climb up to enjoy Mt. Everest (see photo).

Also, our hotel is in this little  sanctuary or eye-of-the-Kathmandu-hurricane.   Tomorrow we raft, then "reggae Saturdays"  downtown, then we fly back to India for some more outdoor adventures. See you out there!