I am almost in India again… arghhh need to keep me wits about me from now on. Matt has left me alone in the wilderness. I miss him not being here it’s like he has taken part of me with him… the mischievous part I think. Did I tell you that he has got big muscles?
Anyway, what a day. I left Kathmandu for Sonauli this morning at 6.30am. My bus trip was, as always, epic. The journey was supposed to take 8 hours – it is now 9pm, I have been traveling for 14 hours and I am not even there yet. I shall explain but a word of warning for those of you who don’t enjoy watching things like some ‘mothers do have um’, or horror movies where the unarmed teenager continually runs up the stairs in order to escape her attacker or in fact any other such ridiculous comedy shows in which you are always wishing that the protagonist would just stop being such a buffoon because this is the Nepalese version…
I had always planned on traveling back to Dehli overland and so was quite nervous when I learned that my travel plans may be effected by riots in Southern Nepal, there is you see an uprising going on in the Terai at the moment, the traditionally marginalized “Madhesis” have taken to the streets in protest at their lack of representation in Parliament. Over the past week the papers have been full of stories covering the bloodshed and the governments ineptitude. Unfortunately for me to get to India overland I must travel through the Terai. Having spent the last few days researching where the disturbances are taking place and how far reaching their effect I had foolishly thought that I would be ok. The majority of reported riots were in the South East and I wanted to head South West so without giving it too much thought I hopped onto a bus that morning. What I couldn’t quite understand was the reaction of other people boarding the bus. As we waited at the station instead of people arriving and getting on the bus of there own accord big conversations and decisions were taking place. Now I don’t speak Nepalese but surely on the front of the bus the destination is written and if that’s where you want to go then on you get? It didn’t seem that simple this morning, I could only gather this by the shaking of heads and frowns that I witnessed – they could of course have been referring to the weather?
By 11am all was going according to plan and we had been well underway for a good 5 hours, had one pee stop and eaten 2 oranges one bag of crisps and a pastry. My bag was firmly stashed under the seat in front of me and I had even bagsied the only seat with an inch of legroom. Things gently changed. We came to a crossroads, the bus stopped and a heated debate began. 30 minutes later we were still stationary, they were still talking. I had no idea what was going on but it seemed that there was a difference of opinion between the passengers (in particular a group of young lads who I instantly took to be god damn trouble makers) and the driver/conductors. Eventually the ‘discussion’ was taken outside and for the first time since being in Nepal I was witnessing outward displays of anger, voices were raised, palm shown, fingers pointed and even a bit of jostling went on. I opened my pack of Oreo cookies that I was reserving for an emergency and the ladies and I watched intently through the bus windows. This went on for some time, us ladies had soon finished the Oreo cookies and were becoming impatient ourselves, how I wished they could have just settled the whole thing with an arm wrestle. Anyway one of my fellow onlookers explained to me that the problem was that the drivers wanted to go straight on in the direction of Sonauli, however it had been brought to the attention of the passengers that there were crowds of protesters rioting in a town along the way. Whereas the drivers would have been happy to drop us of in the middle of it all, (god damn drivers!) the passengers suggested that they take an alternate route via Pokara. Eventually the passengers won out, due mostly to the fact that the driver and his buddies were strongly outnumbered and so around one hour or so of almost fighting later we were off to Pokara. With the good news comes the bad, so we weren’t going to be burned alive by the revolutionary crowds but we were going to have to make quite a detor 180km of detour in fact – in the wrong direction. It is a journey similar in the U.K to leaving Edinburgh for London and going via Pembrokeshire. Hmm and I had eaten all my supplies already! We went on and on and on pretty damn fast as the driver understandably wanted to get home after all this palava.
At one of the pee stops I was kindly advised by a fellow commuter that what with me being a girl and all it probably wouldn’t be safe to arrive at the border town of Sonauli after dark without any friends (I corrected him by letting him know that I did have friends but that they weren’t with me… he didn’t get it). Grateful for the advise I got off in the town before Sonauli and it is from here that I write – I have no idea what it is called but it is hotter then Kathmandu and there are more bugs, lots more. All over the place it seems and now at last at 9.30 I go top sleep, who knows what tomorrow has in store, but somebody said they have trains in India!...zzz.