Did my back pack arrive? We get up early because we have to catch s bus to take us to Tansen. Then another to Pokahara. Dipak jokes that my bag didn’t arrive and I partly believe him. I didn’t think our ambitious plan to get my backpack here would work. But it did. It was here. I find out later that Balkrishna had got up in the middle of the night to walk 30 minutes to meet the jeep bus and carry my 18kg bag back to the house. This is an extremely generous thing for him to do. But this is typical of my treatment by Nepalese families where ever I go. I’m embarrassed by their generosity.
We pack and meet our bus at 7.15am. Balkrishna invites me to come back and stay for a few weeks and teach English. That’s a great idea.
The bus eventually gets us to Tansen. The terrain here shapes the roads into constant bends and u-turns, making a seemingly small distance into a multi hour trip. The constant bracing your body against the turns is tiring. And the nerve tingling experience of trsvelling on narrow roads on the sides of steep mountain ranges adds to the exhaustion. It’s stressful to the unpracticed. Anyway we arrive safely and it’s a credit to the driver and the bus. These roads are extremely hard on the vehicles.
The sim today is to get to Pokhara in enough time to find a hotel and look around. Seems straight forward. We walk around town for a look before trying to find a bus to Pokhara. It’s confusing but Dipak finds the right spot to wait for a bus. It arrived and is crowded of course. We eventually find a seat. It’s 125 km to Pokhara from here. Easy! Five and a half hours later, after dark, we arrive in Pokhara! The terrain was incredibly mountainous and the road threw us around like no other road I’ve experienced in Nepal. How disappointing to arrive after dark. There is no point in getting a hotel beside the lake. We find one near the bus park. We do get to have a shower though, first for many days. For dinner is Dahl Bart and a few welcome beers.
angusmccoll 