The first part of the trip involves hiking from Nangi down to Beni. It is a 4 - 5 hour hike that includes an elevation change of about 1500 m, which is pretty tough on the legs and the knees. The end of this hike includes the "Stairs of Death", which are more than 2000 (I think) stairs that end down in Beni. The "Death" part is not because it is particularly dangerous - just a tough way to end a long hike, and it always seems like the sun comes out just in time for this part. It is also a little embarrassing to be passed by a little, frail-looking woman in flip-flops who is carrying a heavy basket of something to take down to Beni... Not that that has happened to me, of course :-) Anyway, we made it through this part tired and sweaty, but without any issues.
The next part of the trip involves taking a van from Beni to Pokhara. This is like renting a taxi - we pay for it. This used to be a 3 hour drive, but they have paved the road into Beni (most of it anyway), and so now it only takes about 2.5. So we get down from our hike and start to load the seven of us into the van. The van has four rows of seats, so we are thinking that this is awesome because we can spread out. Then the driver tells us that we shouldn't sit in the back row of seats. Hard to fully understand the reasoning, but something about it being too bumpy. So we shrug and squish into the first three rows. But there are a few bags on the back seat that don't belong to us - hmmmm.... So just as we are about to leave, the driver says to us that we are also going to take his sister and another woman with us to Pokhara, and they are going to sit in the back seat. This leaves us feeling like he was a little sneaky, so at first we say no, but then we figure that we should go with it and let them come along. Whatever...
So as we are messing around with the "are they coming or not" decision, a huge truck tries to squish past us on the road where we are parked, and it takes the side-view mirror right off of our van. So our driver has to get out, run after the truck, and get him to stop. So they don't exchange insurance info like we would do. Instead, we have to wait and wait while the truck driver gets his boss - who has to come down to the van to see what happened. Then the boss and our van driver "discuss" what happened and apparently negotiate a settlement. This draws a crowd of people who all stand and watch the negotiations, while we roast inside the van. In the end, some amount of money changes hands (we couldn't tell how much, but it only involved 2 bills), and off we went...
... for about 15 minutes. Then we get to this one-lane bridge, and there is a huge back-up. So when I say bridge, you probably think of something well-constructed with guard-rails, etc. No. The foundation is steel and concrete, but then there are just boards laid across it. Not nailed in, no guardrail. Every time we cross this bridge, I close my eyes. Since there is a back-up, we get out of the van to see what is going on. Not sure if the pics below will do it justice, but when we get up to the front of the line of cars, we can see a big group of people gathered around watching because a very large truck is about to cross the bridge. Before it crosses the bridge, though, people are replacing boards on the bridge and wedging wooden blocks in to hold things in place. Then these little, skinny men are bouncing on the boards to test their strength to see how they will hold up when a big truck drives over it :-) After lots of mucking around, the truck takes a running start to get across it. The man next to me says "Very dangerous" in broken English. You think? I would not have wanted to be that truck driver. I seriously contemplated walking across the bridge and meeting our van on the other side, but everyone else made fun of me so I didn't. In the end, the truck made it across safely, and so did we.
So we drove on for another 15 minutes, and then we got stuck in the mud. It is monsoon, so it rains like crazy - especially at night. The mud was in one of the few spots on the road that was not paved. I am not sure why, when you pave a road, you would leave a stretch unpaved in the middle of the paved part, but I have stopped asking those questions... But this was where the mud was, and we got stuck. Our driver had the foresight to bring two friends who he introduced in the beginning of the ride as the "pushers in case we get stuck in the mud". So here was their chance - they jumped out and pushed. It took quite a few attempts, and we ended up with quite a crowd gathered to watch. Everyone had advice as to how to get out. Meanwhile, tractors and trucks are passing us and nearly sliding into us, but since we were already missing the driver's side mirror, we didn't have to worry about that getting hit. After lots of rocking back and forth, etc, we were finally free. Then we just had to wait for the guys to wash off in the river.
So then the drive is uneventful for a long time. I am watching the clock and the "mile posts" to Pokhara. I am estimating that we only have about 15 km left to go - we'll be there in about 20 minutes. Hooray! At this point, it is probably about 7 pm. We usually get back to Pokhara between 4 and 5 pm. We didn't eat lunch, and we are all hungry, tired, and smelly. Toward the end of the trip, near Pokhara, the road flattens out and you drive through rice fields with houses/villages on the sides of the road. There are no sidewalks - the rice paddies come right up to the edge of the road - and so everyone and everything (people, cows, oxen, dogs, etc) walk along the side of the road. As we are driving through this part, our driver suddenly stops behind another stopped vehicle in front of us and goes running out of the van. We all look at each other in bewilderment. What is he doing? Motorcycles are passing us. We are tired and hungry and just want to get there. Finally, he comes back and says that there is an accident up ahead. Everyone gets out of the van and joins all of the other people to go up and check it out. Apparently, a driver was speeding through this part of the road, hit a young child, spun out of control and ended up with his car flipped upside down in a rice paddy on the side of the road. By the time we got there, the child and the driver had been taken to the hospital. We heard that the child was killed, which was heartbreaking. The mother was working in the rice fields, and the father was in Qatar working. The grandmother was watching the child, and they were just walking down the road. After Kami having been hit by the car in November, the situation really made me sad. At this point, though, the cultural differences became very noticeable. In the US or here in Singapore, if this had happened, the police would arrive, they would help the injured and then move everything to the side of the road so that cars that were not involved could continue to pass. This was much different. The entire accident was off of the road, but someone had put large stones across the road so that traffic was stopped. Even after the ambulance had left and there was no reason to block the road, they wouldn't move the stones. It was raining and getting dark. There was a huge back-up of cars. But no one seemed inclined to open the road back up. After awhile, a mob of local people started to form. When motorcycles started to try to drive through, the people grabbed onto them and stopped them. I am not sure how long we waited, but it was probably about 2 hours. We were a little nervous, but we were well back from the mob and so we weren't too concerned. It was just hard to understand (for us) why the police didn't show up, take control, and open it all back up. After a really long time, some Caucasian backpackers walked past us up toward the accident and mob. I think that they were planning on trying to walk through it and get a different means of transport on the other side. We were actually kind of worried for them. Luckily, just after they passed us, the road was opened up and they turned around. As we drove past where the mob had been, there were lots of Nepalese police in riot gear - chest protectors, shields, etc standing there. Just so different than what we are used to.
We finally made it to Pokhara sometime after 9 pm. Whew...
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