The wheels on the bus go round and round...

October 11: We leave Kathmandu today to start our Annapurna Circuit trek. The alarm goes off at 5.30am. Ms Libra and Bluey join us in our room for breakfast of danishes and coffee, then it's off to the bus station to catch the 'local' bus to Besi Sahar. To begin with, our bus is only half full and the only other westerners are a French couple sitting across the aisle. There are two types of buses in Nepal - local and tourist - and the only difference is that the tourist buses don't pick anyone up en route. As the hours went by, the empty seats filled up. Women sat on cane stools in the aisle. Men hung on to the overhead rails. A kitten meowed from under the sari of the old lady down the back. The old lady sitting in the aisle next to me threw up. The baby two stools back threw up as well. So did the old lady with the kitten. I nearly threw up out the window (I'm what's known as a sympathic vomiter - I'll erk up if you do!) Two people sat on my armrest. I held umbrellas and handbags and squeezed a little boy into the space between my knees and the partition separating my seat from the front steps. A teenaged girl hangs onto the rail above me and snaps chewing gum in my ear - thankfully not for too long as we finally arrive in Besi Sahar. We have an hour to wait until the bus leaves again for Khudi - 9 kilometres further up the 'road'. Last time Smithy and I did this trek, Besi Sahar was the end of the road and we passed buses bogged in the ruts of the track leading to Khudi.

The bus reappears and we saunter over to it - only to be bowled over by the 3oo people who have materialised out of nowhere and who are now fighting tooth and nail to get onto 'our' bus. I scramble over the back of a woman trying to claim precedence since she has a child, and claw my way onto the bus where Smithy is trying to eject another woman from my seat. Two westerners are in Bluey and Ms Libra's seats but Bluey manages to move them by the simple expediency of pointing out that the water bottles they are sitting on belong to her. The bus moves off with 20 people still clinging to the doors and we watch in horror as we pass Ms Libra and our guide, Kuman, still standing by the roadside! Stop the bus! We haul them up the steps and continue on the bumpy ride to Khudi. I now have 3 people sitting on my armrest, two balanced on the aforementioned partition, and one on my lap. Smithy says I'm the lucky one cos at least I can't see out the window and down the vertical gorge that the bus lurches towards everytime it hits a pothole.

There's more madness at Khudi as every porter in Nepal descends on the bus and its baggage. Kuman beats them off with a stick and after a few short minutes in which we put on our boots and daypacks, we're off for a 45 minute walk to Bhulebule and our first night's lodgings. Ah, it's good to be walking and to leave the mayhem of the city behind us. Goodbye traffic. Goodbye mobile phones. Goodbye tooting horns. Goodbye hawkers. Goodbye telly. Goodbye hot showers.