A week ago, we were in the village market, loading into a crowded, beat-up jeep bound for the nearest town.  We had decided to change our plans and head into the interior of the country earlier than planned.  Between the people riding on the roof, the men hanging onto the back, and the rest of us stuffed into the back, there were close to thirty passengers.  As we bumped along the unpaved road, crossing shallow river beds and charging over sudden drops, steep slopes and loose rocks, we were amazed that the jeep actually stopped for MORE passengers!  People lined up across the tailgate, children climbed onto the laps of people already crouching on the floor, and one woman made herself comfortable sitting nowhere in particular but leaning her full body weight against my chest.  Forty-five minutes in that rugged wagon brought us the same distance it had taken A. and I two hours to cover on foot a couple days before, and once we hopped down from the jeep we headed to the local bus station to buy tickets on the public bus to Kathmandu.  

          We loaded our backpack on top and settled into our seats at the front of the bus, right behind the driver.  We had a terrifying view of the windshield throughout most of the journey as our driver surged toward oncoming motorcycles and schoolchildren walking down the side of the road, and played chicken with buses and overloaded trucks which, like ours, were decorated with garlands of plastic flowers and painted in circus colors with slogans like, “slow drive, long life” and “speed control” written across the front as they hurtled toward us with alarming velocity.  Although the journey to Kathmandu took about 18 hours, our bus stopped along the way for just about anyone standing beside the road, bus stop or no bus stop, and served as local transport between villages and small towns along the way.  The longest stops, however, were at military road blocks and armed police checkpoints which we hit several times each hour.  We were never quite sure who or what the soldiers were looking for as they boarded the bus over and over again to look through luggage and shine their flashlights at people, but in spite of the frustration of waiting in lines of traffic at several of the checkpoints, we slowly came to appreciate the safety that these checks probably represented.  As we drove past a village gate crowned with a communist sickle and hammer, and past weathered farm women with actual sickles tucked into their saris as they walked home from their fields, we were reminded that this area has been known for Maoist insurgent activity over the past several years.

           By early the next morning, the scenery changed from fertile plains of wide, green rice fields and forests to more mountainous terrain.  The “highway” (narrower than two lanes and little more than a dirt road in some places) curved along the side of a mountain gorge with little waterfalls cascading down the sides here and there, feeding into a fast-moving river at the bottom.  The same driver had been at the wheel the whole time, without sleep, and if he felt as tired as we did from trying to sleep all night in our uncomfortable chairs, then we were worried.  But he managed to finish the journey, continuing to aggressively pass traffic along the winding road with the same ferocity as he had used on the straightaways the day before.  We arrived in Kathmandu mid-morning—exhausted and relieved to have survived the journey!  And that fascinating city did not disappoint.