Day 81 – The Start of our 'Mountains and Plains Gecko Overland Trip!

' Buddhist Temple - ‘Bodhnath Stupa', Hindu Temple and City Tour

8.30am start, we all piled in our minibus and after another hectic journey across the city we arrived at the largest Buddhist temple in Nepal, peaking between a gap in the buildings on the side of the road it was absolutely stunning! White stupa, those staring Buddha eyes and a bright gold top surrounded by brass turning prayer wheels around the bottom that all the locals, monks and children turned clockwise as they circled the temple in a clockwise direction only. It was quite am amazing sight to see as so many people undertook this daily ritual circling the temple and praying with beads in their hands…We climbed onto the temple and watched as people prayed and undertook a ritual yoga type routine whilst doing so, starting on their knees, pushing their bodies along the floor, then to standing, quite unbelievable the strength they needed to do this.

After visiting some smaller temples to the side, we travelled to a Hindu temple, it was quite amazing to see the contrast, this temple was more of a modern style building all in gold. Then the rain started and in true wimp style we all took shelter under a tin roof whilst the locals walked past without a care in flip flops totally oblivious to getting wet. Next the Bagmati River which was a lovely filthy brown colour running down to the Ganges which I expect when we see the Ganges in India it will be very much the same colour! It was amazing to see the burning ghats on the side of the river though, the Hindu burial ritual with their ashes then released into the river. I didn’t look too closely but it looked like somebody was being burned…eeek. Hindus’ were praying everywhere whilst women were being baptised in the river with milk a sign of fertility I think Krish said. Old people ready to die were being put on slates which was a bit grim but so interesting to learn more of the Hindu religious beliefs.

Sadhu’s (searching for enlightenment!) with their amazing orange turbans and robes were praying in the small temples on the side of the river. Unfortunately a few of them were fake but they were cool to see if you had rupees of course. The monkeys that existed in the temples also were pretty ruthless and one went for mum cause she had an apple, they were abit vicious!! We then went to see a hospice, a government facility for poor people to die in who have no family to care for them. It was so sad to see these elderly people in their rags but I will never forget the old man with his pink jacket and pink woolly hat, sitting cross legged who smiled with such delight at us, a picture that will definitely take pride of place when we get home, he symbolised so much the Nepalese people to me, they have nothing but poverty but they still manage to smile even when they are near death. Many were blind also it was an incredible place, one I would have stayed to volunteer at for some time if I could…

The afternoon was free so absolutely starving we went to a vegetarian restaurant recommended, wrong choice it took 2 hours to serve us and we were ravenous! They also brought out the weakest tea you have ever seen, we think the tea bags are recycled for each customer and blimey it gave dish water a run for its money!! Along with the watery soup we were doing well but afterwards we found that the recommended restaurant was the next floor up…ooops!! Anyway the experience as always was good and it set us up for bartering for some fake North Face gear for our trek as Ads and I had only been in hot countries mainly so far so didn’t have much! Anyway it was mental out there, so many shops and so little time as they say ha ha! No honestly as usual we were pretty rubbish at bartering but managed to get two pairs of trek trousers and a t-shirt for 10 pounds so it wasn’t half bad! Then after getting excited about some cakes mum bought from a lovely bakery then laughing our heads off because they were totally stale and hard but they weren’t meant to be rock cakes!, we had decided to buy Krish’s family a huge chocolate cake to say thank you and thankfully found a decent cake shop after lots of searching…if only we could have sneaked a slice of that one, just for me and mum of course!

That eve, with no electricity so most restaurants struggling to serve much, we treated ourselves to candle light and generator cooked steak in the Everest Steakhouse! Mum and me managed an omelette of all choices whilst Ian had the biggest Mexican Steak you have ever seen (poor Ads his belly rumbling as it came out, our budget was slightly different!) and Ian even shared it because he couldn’t eat it all, Adam was very grateful at this point! Washed down with a huge bottle of good ole Everest Beer we retired to bed after attempting to pack our ruck sacks in the dark for our Himalayan trek!!



DAY 82 – A rather ‘hairy’ 8 hour bus journey across Nepal to Pokhara! A 6.30am start gave us visions of what was to come for the next few weeks! Unbelievably though most of the group seemed pretty fresh and awake. We then watched as all our ruck sacks were piled in to…yes you got it… a tiny Suzuki white roller skate with Emma’s on the roof not even tied and the driver hardly able too see out or get out of his door through all the bags! At this point we all thought this could be the last we saw of all our stuff and people weren’t too happy, we didn’t really know what was happening and at one point we thought this car was taking our bags all the way to Pokhara which made us all think ‘what the hell are we going to be travelling in if it can’t fit our bags even in!!!’ Not good for Miss claustrophobic here….. Krish then finally arrived after having a puncture in his friends car and told us to walk behind the car, flashes of us all walking to Pokhara for the next week were pretty vivid in our minds at this point! It was all very random trekking behind this little roller skate through the streets, and then we came across a street of buses, well not sure if you could call most of them buses. We’d been told to look for a green one and the first green bus sent a look of horror across everyone’s faces as it was literally held together with chicken wire, a usual experience for Ads and I after Cambodia! Thankfully this was the wrong green and we ended up in one that was half decent and a lot roomier than we had anticipated.


The trip was a local transport trip but we were quite glad that Krish had managed to barter a bus for all of us after reading in the Lonely Planet that you DO NOT; I stress DO NOT at any point use local transport from Kathmandu/Nepal. In the time they had written the book, 9 days they had seen 9 deaths from local transport road accidents and this was a daily occurrence apparently…..after the ride to Pokhara we could see why!!


With our bags loaded on the bus we boarded and prepared for our departure but leaving or trying to leave Kathmandu proved to be a hell of an experience or should we say just hell! At first the roads seemed quite quiet but quickly as the minutes ticked by more and more people joined along with a few million heaps known as transport. People were queuing in hundreds at some stadium we passed, all manor of vehicles were joining the road and as we reached a junction towards the road out of this place to Pokhara, we literally just stopped!!! We were totally grid locked it was just crazy, battered blue 3 wheel taxi vans everywhere, cars abandoned cause people couldn’t go anywhere and the traffic police as ineffectual as ever, they seem to know they have no effect though as not a single person listened to them, they just tried to run them over instead, they might as well have been invisible!!! This was definitely chaos of the first order and this junction was also where we would have caught a local bus to Pokhara but looking at this we could see without doubt why you DON’T take local transport!! We sat for ages just staring at the outside world with disbelief in some cases I think, people rushing round amongst the traffic jam selling and buying all in sundry and every size bus you could imagine rammed with people hanging out the broken windows and doors still trying to get as many people on as possible, an experience Nic and I would have to get used too with many many buses to come…


Slowly we were finally, after about 45 minutes moving forward, totally ignoring the police man almost under our wheels, and finally we were across the OTHER side of the junction, a mere 40 metres and that was all. Then a loo stop and a toll stop, but our driver parked behind the most hideous scene of our trip, a lorry rammed to the brim open for all to see of dead buffalo heads, totally bloody and gruesome but we all just had to take a photo! Apparently they were being taken to a button factory??! At this point we were at the top of a mountain hill and as we got passed the gruesome spectacle lorries coming up the other way on the wrong side of the road were racing towards us two side by side, it was mental and the number of near misses was frightening, thank god Krish had told us that we had the safest driver in Nepal…….please lord can he stay with us for the entire trip!


The road to Pokhara wasn’t built by the Romans, it twists and turns up and down, round and round, there were so many corners and bends and mental I mean MENTAL overtaking!! The trucks struggle up the hills so much that at one stop we saw a truck stop and a little kid rush out to put a big rock behind the wheels to stop it rolling back down again! The truck then tried to work its way up the hill straining in first gear with the kid following behind. This scene was repeated all along the journey….


There is only one road to Pokhara from Kathmandu, this means that ALL manner of vehicles are on it from highland taxi’s to suicidal trucks and motorbikes, all of them wanting to be ahead of whatever is ahead of them, it was a pretty frightening ride with a few near misses on our side too! Trucks just ride on the wrong side of the road towards you and DON’T stop even when they see you head on, they overtake on blind corners, almost sending others over the edge of the cliff when meeting them on a corner on the wrong side of the road, this place is just mad!! I am sure that this journey and the sudden drops either side of us will be very much like the Road of Death we want to cycle in Bolivia (if that’s ok mum?!) so maybe this was a good start…uuuummm.


The climbs up the hills was breathtaking though and the mountain scenery around was unbelievable such a beautiful country, the dust and the shacks/villages that we passed reminded us very much of Africa. The dust though is just everywhere and seems to find every crevice the human body has. The journey from A-B was now VERY different to sitting on the M5/M40 at home, ours now involving many near misses, diabolical overtaking (although both happen in England also but at least we have 3 lanes not half a lane!), scenes of carriage from accidents gone before and our first witness of a fatal crash, one lorry completely smashed on its side into the concrete hill on the side of the mountain, it was very apparent that nobody survived from the look of the lorry in the ditch and the faces of locals nearby, I think by this time our nerves were being pretty tested to say the least, would we make it alive….. sorry mum hope you’re not reading this!


The poverty also followed us the entire journey, children on the side of the road scrabbling round in the dirt, many street dogs and wandering cattle, concrete crumbling shacks for houses and arable farming up into the steep hill sides, despite the poverty it really is a beautiful country. We did also find that there was indeed another way to travel that is ‘upper class,’ i.e. on the roof top! Buses were rammed not only inside but on top also as locals and a couple of travellers held on for dear life to the roof as they were thrown around the corners. We did actually wish that we were up there too as at least you could jump off if a head on came your way, but we would later find that it is actually not comfy at all, the roads in Nepal are not exactly smooth……


After a lunch stop where we managed to get our bus pretty much stuck in the mud and looked in envy at those eating the buffet lunch whilst we shared a small plate, we finally, after crossing a pretty tight metal bridge arrived in Pokhara - this being the ‘gateway’ town to the Himalaya!. We were pretty disappointed at first as we had read that ‘the ride into Pokhara consisted of the amazing Himalayan mountains all around which take your breath away, enhanced by the tranquillity of the town and its lake, a far cry from Kathmandu…….’ What we got was totally MENTAL outskirts combined with the smog and dirt like Kathmandu amongst total mayhem and not a Himalaya in sight just a very dull grey sky…… Coming into the main street the mayhem eased a bit and we checked into our hotel. Bring back Kathmandu, despite the very nice looking outside and reception, our room was dull and very damp, our first nights in Nepal had definitely spoiled us!!


We headed down to the lake hoping for some tranquillity and that all amazing view of the famous Fishtail Peak but on seeing the grey and looming thunderstorm ahead opted for a cup of tea! Our ‘by the lake bakery’ had great views of more grey skies and a tiny bit of the lake showing, so after trying to guess where the mountains might be, the heavens literally opened and torrential rain fell continually all evening and night! A group dinner at a local pizza place lifted our spirits but we all did wonder whether our dream of ‘snow-capped Himalayan Mountain Beauty, Fish Tail Peak and the Annapurna Range would actually ever materialise and cloud/grey sky and rain would be our trek experience especially as we had heard it had been like this for the last week. With trekking in Nepal being a massive dream of ours, we went to bed that night praying…literally!