This trip seemed to alternate between really good days and somewhat tough days….this was a tough day. Since we had no plane tickets to get from Jomson to our next stop in Pokhara, and Furwa hadn’t arranged a backup plan to have a private jeep take us down the road to Beni and on to Pokhara, we were put on the ‘local bus’. The first few hours were rather comical. Becky and I both wore dust masks as the road dust and diesel exhaust was pretty bad, but the scenery was a great distraction from the pot-holed single-lane road, and some thoroughly entertaining Indian tourists on the bus danced in the aisle to the blaring music. After a couple bus transfers and break for snack, we arrived mid-afternoon in Beni, covered in dust, with our guts thoroughly scrambled from the rough roads and Becky’s nerves frayed from peering out the bus window down into the abyss of the gorge that dropped away from the roads edge.
We took a break, had a late lunch of dal bhat and were very happy to hear that we’d be getting a taxi for the final 2-3 hour drive into Pokhara, but as we left the restaurant the cabbies saw they’d negotiated a rate with Ongchhu for ‘locals’ and refused to drive us for that price once they saw we were tourists. So, the taxi ride disappeared and was replaced with our final leg on another local bus. This was no longer a small 20 person bus, but one of those huge, brightly painted school buses packed to the gills with locals. I wasn’t a particularly good sport, having a woman’s purse smacking me in the face with every pothole and a gentleman next to me resting his posterior on my shoulder as if I were a barstool burned away any humor I had left for the day.
About an hour out of Beni, the bus came to a halt and we could see traffic had stopped. There’d been an accident - a motorcyclist crashed into a jeep and died. For the next five hours we sat on the side of the road, the police came and went, the sun set, and Ongchhu kindly delivered us a large Tuborg beer to us to help take the edge off. Ongchhu explained to us that in Nepal, no one has insurance so when there’s an accident, the police facilitate the financial negotiations right there on the spot. The motorcyclist’s brother arrived and there was a heated debate/argument/something in the distance as they attempted resolution.
Well after dark we saw a bright flash of flame in the distance. Ongchhu explained that when the police get cold, they usual light tires on fire. We weren’t sure if they were the tires of the crashed vehicles or what, but sure enough in the distance they were burning some old tires.
Finally at 10pm, five hours after we’d stopped, traffic began rolling again. Two more hours of bumpy roads and we finally pulled into Pokhara at 12:30am, 18 hours after we’d left Jomsom. We got to the hotel, tried to clean the days dirt from our flesh and hair and promptly went to sleep on a bed that felt like it was a block of wood covered in a thin sheet of foam. The next day we’d notice that the place was called the Hotel Bedrock….coincidence?
...the next day
link to all the photos
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it was dusty...really dusty.
the cops are cold.... time to burn some tires!
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