The highway home

Pokhara is a magical place with serene lakes, stunning views of the Himalayas, snapdragons and palm trees, an abundance of non-poultry birds, showers, hot water, electricity, washing machines, pickles, and salads. It is bustling but not chaotic. It’s tropical but temperate. It is a hard place to leave.  As we were there over the new year (happy 2069 everyone!) there was even a carnival, complete with pink cotton candy (identical tasting to the brightly colored spun sugar that one would find at any carnival), rides - including a non-functioning Ferris wheel and a manually turned merry-go-round with plastic off-brand plastic peddle cars instead of horses, and stalls selling everything from galvanized steel doors to water filters to top of the line generators.

Our official reason for going to Pokhara was to extend our visas, though we could have done this in less than the 9 days we ended up spending there. Being that we waited until the last day we were legally allowed to stay in the country to get the visas I was relieved at how simple the process was and how nice the people at the immigration office were. We filled out the appropriate form, giving the answers we assumed were most appropriate - even if they weren’t exactly accurate and despite the fact that no one probably cared (yes, we had a confirmed mode of transport out of the country on the required day, yes we were just in Nepal to travel, do touristy things and spend money - $4000 seemed like a good figure to write down and it’s not like they were going to check our bank accounts, no we most certainly wouldn’t be doing any kind of work – volunteer or other – while we were here).  After happily taking our money, photocopying our passports to put on file in the junk drawer, and writing our names down in a ledger book marked USA (from one of about 8 bearing different country names stacked in a pile on a desk) we were all set to go.

The rest of the time we spent relaxing, dreaming of defecting to Pokhara permanently, and rationalizing/debating how many extra days we could prolong our stay. First we decided that one day seemed perfectly fine, but as that extra day quickly approached, we figured one more really wouldn’t be a problem either. It felt a little harder to justify the last additional day and although we were going to do it anyway, it turned out that there was a transportation strike and we wouldn’t have been able to leave anyway.

Getting back to Tulsipur from Pokhara was not the simplest journey. I can’t imagine why, but not many people are trying to leave paradise to go to Tulsipur. We had a few options of how we were going to travel. The most direct choice would be to take the overnight local bus that went “straight” from point A to point B. Then there was the option of going way out of the way and return through KTM which would involve a seven hour bus ride one day, followed by a 12 hour ride the next. The third option also involved two buses, this one a more direct route, but with only local buses as options. We weighed the best and worst case scenarios of our choices. If we tried to do the third option in one day the best case would be that would get home around 8pm. If we arrived any later, which we most certainly would, there would be a good chance that we would not be able to get into our apartment as they lock it from the inside at night.  So that didn’t seem good. Night bus - best case scenario we would get in at 6am the following morning; worst case would be that we would go off a cliff in the middle of the night. We considered this option for much longer than we should have. The KTM option just felt annoyingly out of the way and though we would get to be on tourist buses the whole time, it would end up costing a lot of money that we didn’t really have. We eventually decided on a compromise of the two local buses, but spread out over two day. The city where we were supposed to transfer, Butwal, is a dusty hot mosquito infested place close to the Indian border. The reviews of hotels were not glowing: in one someone found a used bandage in their bed (this person felt "unsafe and disgusted"), in another the person didn’t feel too unsafe. Someone got food poisoning and they didn’t even eat. There may have been bed bugs in a guest house without beds. We chose instead to go a few kilometers/hours south of Butwal to Bhairahawa (the jumping off point for Lumbini) and stay there. It seemed like the best choice based on the information we had been given.

The Siddhartha highway winds its way from Pokhara through Butwal to Sunauli on the Indian border and is the most direct route, though whenever we asked we were told that this wasn’t an option, and trying to Google it rendered only newspaper articles about bus accidents and a link to someone’s blog describing  their personal hell. To Google transportation options to many places in Nepal feels like Googling your health symptoms. If you find anything the outlook is akin to a brain tumor. As such we were under the assumption that we would have to take a more circuitous route. Despite all   of this the bus we ended up on at 6:30am did take the beautifully scenic, less-treacherous-than-expected-as-long-as-you-didn’t-look-down-or-focus-on-the-people-bent-over-with-their-faces-in-plastic-bags direct highway. One amenity that it seems all buses have is a supply of plastic bags for the weary traveler. Comforting. The bus was mid-size, and extensively decorated with various deities. I always find this disconcerting. It shows a lack of confidence that the bus can make it to its destination without relying on an extensive variety of things that can channel the correct overseer of our safety. I prefer seatbelts, well paved roads, sober drivers, and railings as back-up plans, but whatever.  At the same time, the old colorful hanging decorations, and the bus’ worn out interior and exterior, serve as reminders to me that the bus hasn’t crashed yet which is reassuring, though similarly irrational.

So there we were, making pretty good time heading down through terraced hillsides away from Pokhara. As we wound our way around a corner the driver slammed on the brakes. Clearly we had hit something. I asked Scott, who was at a better vantage point. He said it was a man in a wheelchair. I didn’t initially believe him, though my reasoning was more based on the detail of the guy being in a wheelchair more than anything else. I’d rather not explain this reasoning.

He was in a wheelchair. This could take a while. A long while. I looked out the window to see a man on the other side of the road walking by with his arm raised, his hand wrapped in a bloody cloth from an unrelated accident. I turned back and focused on the head of the person in front of me. Luckily, after only a few minutes assessing the situation the man we’d hit was helped onto the bus, and his wheelchair strapped to the roof.  The driver, more frustrated by the paperwork he surely knew was coming than shaken by the fact that he had just hit an old disabled man, sat back down behind the wheel and began to pull out onto the road as the man who’d been hit sat to his side, eyes reddened, his thoughts seemingly asunder, shaking his finger and giving an impassioned lecture to the driver and anyone else who cared to listen.

We didn’t drive far before we stopped in front of a pharmacy that was conveniently next door to a bicycle repair shop. The man was helped off the bus but refused further assistance in crossing the street, instead choosing to pull himself dramatically by his arms. The first stop that he, the driver, and the ticket taker/plastic bag hander-outer made, was to the bike shop. It didn’t appear that they were going to be able to help repair the chair. Next they all went to the pharmacy. At this point most of us got off the bus, knowing that we might be there a while. At the pharmacy the old man was lightly wrapped in a few bandages.  It seemed like he was being humored the way one humors a child by putting a band aid on his psychological boo-boo. He was clearly shaken up, but it was apparent that his physical condition had unfortunately deteriorated long before our bus came along. 

We were there about an hour. Not bad considering such an offensive could have led to a shutdown of the highway. The police showed up. They talked to the man, who continued his rant, and to the driver. Eventually we all boarded the bus again, including the old man and with a cop as an additional passenger. A few minutes later we stopped again, this time in front of the police station. The driver and the ticket taker got off. There was a lot of walking back and forth between the bus and the station. More than one officer took the man’s statement. He was increasingly obstinate and clearly staying put until all was sorted out in his favor. He had demands, or he was coming up with them as he went along, and he wasn’t going anywhere till those demands were met. An officer took his age. Sixty-four. He didn’t look a day younger than eighty-two. An agreement was at last reached. He was given 500 rupees for his trouble, a ride to wherever he was going (I tried to squelch thoughts of premeditation on his part), and his wheelchair would take a trip atop the bus to Sunauli, hundreds of kilometers away and apparently the closest place it could be repaired. The following day the driver would bring it, fixed, back to the man.

Being that we were going to be passing through Tansen, a world heritage site, on our way to Butwal anyway now that we were on the Siddhartha highway, Scott had suggested, prior to the incident, that we spend the night there instead of going farther out of our way. Six hours and 50 or so miles from where we’d started the bus stopped and it seemed that we had made it to our destination. The assistant confirmed that we were in the right place for getting off in Tansen. As we started walking away he called out and indicated that Tansen was to our right. We walked on, and on. Up and up. As we began our assent up the hill a sign confirmed that we were going in the correct direction, though it failed to tell us how far we were from our destination. It turned out to be about 5 miles up. In good form I reminded Scott that this had been his idea. For better or worse I didn’t want the blame falling on me. That happens enough when I suggest dinner and we sit for 45 minutes while the rice we don’t necessarily even want gets cooked. As we trudged up the hill buses and jeeps passed us letting us know that there were ways to get there, we just weren’t aware of them. Ultimately Tansen was lovely though, and Scott gets full credit for us ending up there, though in my defense it was not directly on the highway as I had suggested, and his patience and zen-like manner on the following day’s bus ride evened the score a bit.

As is often our style we saw none of the sights, but the hotel room was comfortable.  We talked to a kid who told us his parents owned a restaurant. When asked if he worked there he was quick to reply that ‘no, I only study. I know my child rights.’ We saw dogs on leashes. People wore seatbelts. On our way out of town the next morning our driver pulled over to answer his cell phone. I considered taking pictures. It seemed awkward.

From Butwal to Tulsipur was the local-est of local buses. Smaller than the others we’d been on but at times with more people.  And for some reason it always seems that on local buses the people going the shortest distance have the most baggage. Plenty of people who traveled all the way from Butwal carried seemingly empty backpacks, whereas those traveling distances of 5-10 miles tend to carry bags and livestock that at least equivalent to their own weight and mass. Our two seats were really about the size of 1 and ½, but at least we had seats. We stopped every few minutes for someone to get off, get on, pee, strap a goat to the roof, eat a cucumber, or just to sweat it out on the side of the road for an unknown amount of time. Sometimes the driver disappeared for 20 minutes, but not knowing when he would return and well aware that no one was going to wait for us we were forced to stay close. With no warning we would be off again, twice jumping onto the bus as it had already begun to move despite having not strayed more than two feet from it.  On the other hand, the bus did not stop for the kid working on it to jump on in time and he had to latch onto the back climb over the roof and then down the ladder on the side next to our window and hop through the door.

In Pokhara or Kathmandu no one gives us a second look and couldn’t care less who were are. But about three hours from home a kid got on the bus and as he walked by he said my name. I had never seen him before in my life. That is not unusual in Tulsipur where we are never anonymous. It was clear we were on our way home.