Eating Dust

I shouldn't complain, but I always do. If anyone were to ask me what I've enjoyed least about this trip, I would say the bus rides. But although our 7 1/2 hour trip from Kathmandu to Pokhara was rough, it was nothing compared to that of the people on the bus that we saw teetering over a cliff. Nor was it as bad as the two buses that ended on their sides or the one we saw with it's roof caved in and its wheels pointing skyward. In total, we saw five bus accidents and one smashed 4 wheel drive truck on the 196 km of road that winds its way up, down and around the Middle Hills of Nepal.

I wasn't without a few accidents either, but mine weren't nearly as severe. I bumped my head twice exiting the toilets during two of the bus stops. By the third stop I learned to duck. The tea stop loos are built into shakes no bigger than a doll house. The tallest one I saw was only four and a half feet high. I'd rather have just squatted in the woods. Heads Up!

A few hours on the bus and my nerves were frazzled. I didn't like swerving around steep mountain roads without having total control of the vehicle. The bus-over-the-edge-rate which climbed with each turn just heightened my anxiety. After a while, though, I relaxed and stopped looking out the front windshield and trying telepathically to tell the driver when to cut the wheel or slow down. Maybe I figured that if he did this for a living and was still alive, that was a plus in my favor. Maybe I figured that if our bus did go over the edge, it was better if I didn't see it coming.

It took a long time, but eventually, after several turns, swerves, stops and curves, and hundreds of lungfuls of second-hand diesel belches, we arrived in Nepal's second biggest city. The Lonely Planet described it as a beautiful city that lured crowds to it's location on the shore of a lavish blue lake overlooking the snow capped Himalaya.

So where was the lake? All I saw was dust. The bus stopped in a brown plume. The driver and one of the Nepalese men on board hopped out into the barren field and began untieing and tossing the packs from the roof. "This must be the place!" John said and rushed from the bus to grab our bags before they hit the ground. The first pass had a successful reception. The second ended in a mushroom cloud.

When the dust settled I saw the taxi drivers. They were lined up along the fence reaching to us but not moving past some invisible force field, pointing and waving their hands at hotel brochures and hand written signs. We, the mind-numbed tourists, stood on the other side clutching our unrecognizable packs wondering what to do.

We all stepped toward the taxi drivers. I felt like I was part of a Congo line, following the lead of the person in front and he the person in front of him and so on. As soon as the first in line penetrated the force field, the hoard descended upon us. "I take you to the best hotel." "Come with me, I take you to a nice cheap hotel." "I was here first." One of them began reaching for my pack. "You come with me."

"We just want to go to the lake," I said. "Just take us to the lake. We'll pick our own hotel." Futile words falling on deaf ears. We piled into the taxi along with Fargle, an Irishman we'd met on the bus (luckily the ride was short; three of us crammed into the back seat of that tiny car was painful) and were whisked off to a Hotel. "Just have a look at a room. You don't have to stay," he said. "If you like the room, the taxi ride is free." I should have expected this. Ok, why not, we'll look; we were already there. The room looked fine, it was US$7 and we were too tired to really care where we stayed anyway.

Pokhara

Like Kathmandu the streets of Pokhara are lined with carpet stores, jewelry stores, book stores, and stores selling every kind of hiking equipment. Street vendors share the road with water buffalo and push their carts hawking the one word fruit called "mangobananaorange" (I was never able to distinguish a pause between the words). Men stand on corners selling bamboo flutes and tiger balm; Tibetan woman unwrap layers of cloth containing silver jewelry whenever a potential customer walks by. Along the palace wall men in turbans charm snakes from wicker baskets. After we got situated in our hotel room and had washed off a few layers, we went out into the streets to investigate.

Which led us to dinner. The food was excellent; it wasn't covered with dust and because it was the Nepalese New Year, we got a 15% discount and complimentary rum. After dinner we found a trekking map for the Annapurna Sanctuary and a carpet store where we spent three quarters of an hour looking at rugs, because the store owner wouldn't let us leave.

We quickly learned that you can't casually walk into a carpet shop without the owner pulling every carpet from the shelves. "Just look, you don't have to buy." You can say no, but there is no stopping him from offering you a stool and rolling out the next carpet - and the next and the next. 3x5's, 4x6's, long runners, short runners, "Just take a look." We saw them all and as the shelves became bare, the pile on the floor grew higher and higher. "Which one do you like? If you don't like these, I have more."

Our eyes were turning red from the flying wool "No, no more," I cried. "We'll come back." We finally made our escape and headed back toward the hotel. We got caught at two more carpet stores on the way, but the visits were short and we learned a lot about Tibetan carpet design and about identifying quality in silk rugs. When we returned from the mountains we'd be informed shoppers. In the meantime we needed to get to sleep so we could hit the trail first thing in the morning. I was looking forward to hiking in snow-capped wonder. We hadn't seen snow since the Winter of '94-'95! It seemed fitting that while getting ready for bed, I recited a Christmas poem, only my version was a little different: "The children were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of carpets danced in their heads."