At the end of June we went to Gorkha and Kathmandu to renew
our visas. Much to our surprise and delight the process went smoothly. People
remembered us, the education office in Gorkha had heard good things about us,
and (most important) we knew the process and came prepared. The process still
took two weeks, but that was fast compared with stories we have heard. So we
are good to stay until we return to the States next spring.
From there we returned to Dharapani for a week, where
everyone was planting rice and had no time for us. Then we spent some time in Pokhara
to the west, where we stayed in our usual hotel on the lake. But then we got
bored and decided to head west to Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha.
That was on July 22. Our route took us from Pokhara to Bhairahawa through the heart of Syangja and Palpa districts. The headline from July 23:
Around noon, in the middle of nowhere, we stopped dead in a
long line of traffic. There were reportedly two major slides ahead. Estimates
of getting them cleared ranged from two hours to six hours to tomorrow. A
bulldozer came but it wasn’t big enough so it went away. We hung around for an
hour and then waded through a pond of mud to see for ourselves. It was clear
that nothing would be moving that day, so we decided to climb over the slide
and seek a bus trapped on the other side that would be returning west. That
meant walking on unstable rock and dirt on a steep slope over a river gorge.
Rocks were continuing to come down.
We encountered lots of landslides, most of which did not
detain us. Around 6:00, we were stopped by another slide (left). A
bulldozer was there within an hour, and we got to watch the courageous (or
insane) machine operators push dirt out from under an active slide zone. By
sunset we were on our way, with hours yet to go. We weren’t stopped again, but
were slowed by piles of cleared debris and isolated rocks all along the route.
When we finally got there, Lumbini was pretty interesting.
The birthplace of Buddha, it is a World Heritage Site and the Nepalese
government, along with international donors, has been implementing a
multi-decade master plan to develop the site. We saw the rock that marks the
actual location of Buddha’s birth and the pillar erected by Emperor Ashoka in 249
B.C.
The next day we hired a guide to take us around to other
places associated with Buddha. At Kapilvastu, we saw the ruins of the Sakya palace
and walked through the foundations of the gate (left) through which Siddhartha
passed when he renounced his princely life to seek enlightenment.
We had planned to go to India for the remaining month of vacation,
but we were so focused on the Nepalese visa that we neglected to apply for
India. That takes at least ten days, which would have given us too little time.
So instead, we hung around Kathmandu and visited some of the local attractions.
We also saw old friends, including Dil Thapa, the man who taught Harvey Nepali
in Kathmandu back in 1973.

That was on July 22. Our route took us from Pokhara to Bhairahawa through the heart of Syangja and Palpa districts. The headline from July 23:
It had rained heavily the night before and was raining the
morning we left Pokhara, but this is the monsoon, so what else is new? We had made
reservations on a “tourist bus,” which is supposed to be an express and more comfortable.
Ours was neither. At 6:00 we folded
ourselves into our seats for the seven-hour trip. We made good time for the
first several hours until we encountered landslides. The first few weren’t bad;
they were small and quickly cleared by bulldozers deployed along the road.

Once on the other side, we joined the masses of people with
the same obvious idea of finding a bus going west. Under the best of
circumstances, Nepalese buses are crowded. This one was packed to the gills.
The Trip from Hell was about to begin. We still argue about who had the worst
time of it.
Harvey’s story
I was offered a seat in the back, but that was a
prescription for claustrophobia. Instead, I staked out a spot on the bottom of
three steps leading into the bus. It meant standing for three or four hours,
but it had the advantage of fresh air. Buses here run with the door open, but I
was in no danger of falling out; a layer or two of people hanging out the door
would have to go first.
The doorway was packed and became more so as we went on.
Just when you’d think a piece of paper couldn’t slide on board, three more
people would pile on. It was a hot day
and there was no part of my body that wasn’t pressed tight against someone. As
people moved around, my body would contort, like playing vertical Twister. At
one point, my head spent far too long tucked firmly in the armpit of a sweaty
fat man standing on the step above me.
Music is the curse of Nepalese public transportation.
Whether their tastes run to local popular music or Hindi film tunes, drivers like their
music loud. This driver had a fondness for breathtakingly bad Nepalese rap and he
liked it really loud. We always carry ear plugs when we travel, but mine
were in the front of the bus with Malinda and they would not have helped anyway.

Nepalis are patient, even cheerful, in situations of extreme
discomfort. As more passengers piled on, people squeezed themselves
ever-smaller. A woman with an infant came on, and the child was passed to the
lap of a complete stranger. When I tried to move the arm of the sweaty fat man,
he reproached me with “But we must cooperate!” In such a genial environment, it
would have been churlish to get impatient and inexcusable to “lose it.”
I lost it shortly after the last landslide. My legs and back
ached, I was hungry, my sandaled feet had been trampled all afternoon, and the
music was making my head explode. The tipping point came when a young man with
whom I was standing cheek-to-cheek pleasantly asked, “And where are you going
today?” “I’M GOING FUCKING CRAZY WITH THAT LOUD MUSIC!” (Malinda: “There were
four or five people standing between us and I heard him say that. That’s when I
began to worry about him.”) The outburst was unpardonable, but I felt better
after it.
We finally made it out of the hills and into Butwal around
8:30. The bus emptied (relatively) and I was able to sit down. We were now in
the Terai (Nepal’s sliver of the Gangetic plain) and followed the
flat-as-a-pancake, straight-as-an-arrow road to Bhairahawa. I had called ahead
and when we arrived at 9:30 there was a car waiting for
us, ready to take us the final 25 km to Lumbini, a comfortable hotel, and our
first meal of the day.
Malinda’s story
The landslide that stopped us dead was daunting, but a path
had been made over the toe end and a slow trickle of people was passing over. We heard that the nearest town was just a few
kilometers away on the other side, and decided that having food and drink, as
well as the possibility of a bus going toward Lumbini, sounded better than
waiting where we were. So we crossed the mound of rubble with several
heart-stopping moments when loose boulders continued to ricochet down the
mountain.
The geology through which the road runs consists of Upper
Precambrian to Late Paleozoic highly inclined and faulted bands of thinly
laminated slates and shales between layers of calcitic quartzites and
limestones. In any good rain the calcites dissolve, the thin slates and shale beds separate, and gravity does the rest. It was roadside geology in action!
On the bus, I claimed a seat up front on the engine cover, a
large, flat surface used for passengers and cargo. I was glad to be sitting. (There
is no prohibition on standing in front of the yellow line. There is no yellow
line. We have even seen drivers sharing their seat with passengers.)
Personal space is less of an issue for Nepalis than it is
for us. They don’t like crowded buses
either, but they are more stoic about being fully dressed in steam bath conditions
while pressed cheek to jowl. Or, from my sitting position, cheek to buttocks. I
was facing to the rear near the stairwell, so people leaned in my direction and
stepped on my feet every time someone got on or off. The conductor would lie
across me to collect fares from people behind me at the very front. The bus
made frequent stops, which meant frequent movement around me. Bus conductors
are expert at calculating how many people they can manhandle in and still have
a handhold and foothold for themselves at the very edge of the door.
The worst was the heat. Several inches of padding usually cushion
the engine cover. Not on this bus. I was sitting on a metal sheet on top of the motor. I was afraid
my quick-dry skirt would melt. I was able to dig my rain poncho from my pack and
put it under me, but then I worried that would ignite. Sweat was pouring into
my eyes and my hair was drenched. Sitting on that griddle, my clothes
completely soaked, I could feel my privates starting to poach. Now add hot flashes….

This went on for hours. The only relief came when we were
stopped by landslides and people got off to look. I was able to get more air
and space, but those stops were a mixed blessing. They also meant that we were
further delayed.
*****


*****
From there we traveled east to Chitwan’s national wildlife
reserve. For three days we got to see crocodiles, elephants, rhinoceroses, tiger prints
(but no tigers), and lots of birds.
While riding an elephant through the jungle, we saw a baby
rhino that had been mauled by a tiger. We were told the next day that the rhino
was fine and back with its mother, but it sure didn’t look fine when we saw it.

It was all very fun, but the Terai is hot, flat, and not
that interesting. We were glad to leave for hills and home.
We arrived here on July 30, hoping to spend the final
week-plus of our vacation organizing our photos, writing this blog, catching up
on emails, and getting ready for school. Unfortunately, eight of the ten days following our
return were spent without electricity, a result of poles falling over in the
soggy soil. As we watched our computer, i-pods, and kindles run out of battery,
and our pump-fed solar hot water tank run dry, we had a premonition of the End of Civilization.
Then came a spate of computer problems. The keyboards on
both our computers stopped typing certain letters. If it wasn’t due to
an undetectable virus, we think the probable cause
was an infestation of tiny ants in our laptops that ate away at the key
contacts. (That sounds stupid, but we cleaned them out, still have the problem, and don't know how else to account for it.) We finally got a cheap Chinese external keyboard, which
works fine if you don’t consistently need capital letters. Malinda’s
computer is on its last legs (she's already lost Photoshop!), and Harvey's is starting to show those first worrying signs of untrustworthiness. At some point one of us will need to make a trip into Kathmandu to reprovision us (another bus ride!), but all we can do now is Embrace the Suck.
*****
Meanwhile, we are back in school and anticipating a busy fall with teaching and other projects. The monsoon should wind down and the cooler weather arrive
in about a month, and we are looking forward to that.
Finally, two milestones are worthy of note. At the end of
July, we passed the one-year mark of our stay here. It continues to be engaging, challenging, and mostly fun. And this week we celebrated
our 30th anniversary. After a year of surviving as Eng and Cheng, we
feel pretty confident that we’re good for another thirty years.
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