A Very Bumpy Bus Ride
Early the following morning we headed to the bus station. We got our tickets, found the right bus heading to Trisuli and we were on our way to the All Hands volunteer base.
I have to add here that the reason we were in Nepal at this point during our travels is because while we were in Germany we received an email from All Hands saying our application had been accepted and we were welcome to join the team for 2 weeks end of October/beginning of November. Throughout the course of our adventure around the world our plans changed frequently. Although originally we had planned to be in Nepal in October for trekking, at the point in time when we received the email our plans had changed and we were thinking of staying in Europe through the Fall with the intention to slow down our travels. However, this was an offer we didn’t want to pass up and so we confirmed and booked our flights ..ending up in Nepal in the Fall after all.
The bus ride turned out to be unlike any bus ride I had ever taken. The road was incredibly bumpy - partly from the damage caused by the earthquake - and windy. Most of the road didn’t have a guardrail and the bus would drive just a foot from the side of the road beyond which the ground dropped steeply down. However, ~5 hours later we stopped for lunch in Trisuli and had our first ever ‘Nepali Thali’. Afterwards it was just a short drive to our stop and after asking a few locals we found our way to base - in one piece ..with all our luggage (which we have heard is not always the case as luggage typically gets strapped to the roof.. and well it could happen that upon arrival it is no longer there :S).
My first impressions of Nepal (beyond Kathmandu) included a green rolling landscape covered in plenty of rice fields and snow covered peaks that could be seen here and there in the distance; basic living conditions that reminded me of some rural parts of Mexico that I have seen; a lot of construction sites - likely partly as a result of the earthquake damage; a lot of shops selling ‘cultural’ items and knockoffs of popular brands such as Nike, Adidas, and The North Face (seen even in the smallest of towns in the countryside); and curious-friendly-helpful Nepalis who for the most part spoke enough English to help us out. (:
