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Published: January 25th 2008
(Matt)
The bus from Kathmandu to Pokhara was supposed to take 6 hours, the journey took us over 13 hours because coming in the other direction, about ten cars ahead of us, a truck hit a minibus which in turn crashed into a wall hitting a school girl and damaging her legs (she went to hospital and was ok). Perhaps the strangest thing from a western point of view was the reaction of the villagers where the girl lived. They chased after the truck and threw stones at it smashing all of the windows, this was very exciting as I'd just got out of our bus and walked towards them to see why we'd stopped! They then placed logs and stones across the road to stop the traffic in both directions.
It seems the villagers wanted compensation for the accident (presumably from the truck company?) and to make their point they blocked the road and armed themselves with sticks. Not sure why they bothered because when the Army and Police turned up, despite their larger numbers and huge guns, they seemed quite content to stand around chatting, smoking and/or trying on body armour. Everybody, including those in the enourmous
tailback seemed content to let the situation play out. A lot of people proceeded on their journey by swapping buses with those on the opposite side of the blockade, the amount of stuff people were moving by stepping through the villagers and over the logs/stones was at times really funny. I even helped one family carry their big (heavy!) bags. Eventually, six and a half hours later a comprimise must have been reached (or everyone forgot why they were there!) the truck and minibus were driven away and the road block removed. The amount of chaos and delay caused by what amounted to a minor traffic accident was astonishing.
We finally arrived in Pokhara to find a fairly quiet resort town with great restaurants, hotels and a big lake. On our first day we were very outdoorsy as the weather was so good and went kayaking and hired our own row boat to get to the start of the the uphill trek to the 'World Peace Pagoda'.
Day 2 we hired a taxi to take us to a waterfall which could be viewed from above and below ground, it was rubbish from all angles. The day was salvaged
and cost justified when I got to say to the taxi driver
'To the Bat Cave!'. In contrast to the waterfall, the Bat Cave was brilliant, we got really close to the 8000 plus fruit bats in complete darkness, got to see them twitch when the guide made certain noises and had to crawl up through a tiny opening to get out!
Sightseeing done (the weather was too cloudy to make a trip to the mountains), we spent a good proportion of our three days in Pokhara eating, drinking and on the Internet. It was a nice break before the two day journey back to Delhi where we get on a plane to Bangkok (via Hong Kong for three days).
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toria
non-member comment
fantastic
I am genuinely loving your blog and the fantastic photos. You need to make it into a book when you get back. ps were they charging more for number twos or was it the style of toilet??!!