Tyson and Graham’s Arrival
28/12/14
Graham's flight was delayed, so Tyson flew into Nepal, first.
I had made a sign that simply greeted him "Asshole." I showed up at the airport way too early, in anticipation. It took him nearly 45 minutes to get through customs and get his visa-mostly because of the complete lack of directions for how to actually apply for the visa-just a random series of tables and people to speak with. Tyson started with Step 3, back tracked to Step 2 and then finally figured out where Step 1 was began the process for real.
He finally made it into the freezing, concrete, open-air greeting area around 4pm.
We hoped in a taxi and made our way back to the hotel. I felt validated when Tyson admitted how much dirtier Kathmandu was than Asuncion.
We decided to go meet Ben and then wander around Thamel for a bit-tourist shopping, chess, etc. By 6 we were starving and got Tibetan food for dinner.
After dinner Tyson crashed hard, so I went to the airport, alone, to pick up Graham from his 11pm flight. I was also tasked with trying to find Ben's cousin's lost suitcase-I got very chummy with the security guards at the airport, to the point that the let me just hang by the baggage claim, instead of outside with the rabble! We never did find the bag that night, but she eventually got it back.
Graham was nearly an hour late to arrive by baggage claim-he had an even harder time applying for a visa, as there were only three pens for use in the entire application area! Ahhh Nepal.
29/12/14-30/12/14
We spent the next two days seeing Kathmandu. The boys fought there jet lag pretty well, but usually crashed by late afternoon. The first day we went to see the (now destroyed) old palace section of Kathmandu, and toured it with Ben's family. We also saw the monkey temple and wandered around Thamel.
The second day we were all pretty wiped out and spent most of the day on the roof of the hotel with Jewels, drinking, eating and chatting.
31/12/14
Early on New Years Eve we got up and got on a tourist bus to Pokhara with Jewels and her friend. Tyson slept the whole time, but the rest of us amused ourselves by playing "Fuck, Marry, Kill" but with food. For instance: Fuck, Marry, or Kill: Cheese Fries, Nachos, Mozzarella Sticks. My choice would be to kill the nachos, fuck the cheese fries(metaphorically speaking) and marry the mozzarella sticks. Much fun was had, although we were starving by the time we got to Pokhara.
Tyson and Graham's dad had surprised us with a fancy hotel room for New Years-so our first stop was to check in and shower.
Of course, as soon as we got there we realized that Nepal had happened and they had lost our reservation. The only room they had available was a shitty two-bed affair that would leave me sleeping on the floor. It did have hot showers, however, so we showered up, got dressed and decided to start our revelrous night.
We began by getting some food and playing Cards Against Humanity with Bora, Nekeia, Jewels and her friend. I was relieved that everyone got along.
We went back to Bora and Nekeia's hotel room to have some drinks.
By 9 pm we decided it was time to hit the streets. Pokhara was packed with people-more Nepalis than tourists, which I was surprised about. We mostly wandered around, eating food from street vendors and dancing to random music coming out of clubs. The most memorable part of the night was our visit to the Mortal Combat Club(not it's real name), a Nepali dance club. Nepali dance clubs are both similar and different than American strip clubs. They look similar-kinda skeezy, red light, a big stage with a pole. They are different in that there is no actual stripping and that it's apparently normal for families with children to visit them. We sat in the front row with families with small babies on either side of us. For an hour various groups of people-couples, groups of only men, groups with men and women and single women came out and performed dance numbers. Most of them were not sexually provocative in any way. It was weird and hilarious.
The rest of the night we spent wandering around to various bars and outside seating areas. As the night went on, and the Nepali men got drunker, my night got worse. I have never been groped so much in my life. There were times when there were several pairs of hands on my body at once. I was so uncomfortable that I started to cry. By the end of the night Graham has to walk with his arm tightly around me, pushing our way through the crowd. By 11:30 we had found a picnic table near an old Christmas tree to perch at. Earlier in the night we had found 1,000 rupees on the ground and used it to buy a bottle of champagne, for midnight. As the clock struck midnight we all kissed and hugged and, I believe, reflected on where we'd been when the year 2014 had come, and where we'd be when 2016 arrived.
1/1/15
As you would imagine, the next morning everyone was feeling pretty slow. We had planned to make our plans for our trip up into the Himalayas, that day, but instead we spent the entire day in our correct hotel room, watching a music countdown on Indian VH1.
2/1/15
We were now behind a day. We spend the first half of the 2nd running around trying to figure out our plan for our trip up to Mustang. We finally decided on taking public transportation up there. We would get up into Mustang by the night of the 3rd then have three days to hike around, and then fly out, back to Pokhara. By 2 pm we were on a bus up into the Himalayas. This was the beginning of the really adventurous part of the trip, the part that many tourists do not take-and we were starting it on a public bus, Tyson and Graham's first Nepali public bus.
The ride was pretty scary-it was dark by 2/3 of the way through the trip, and the narrow mountain roads were fairly new to me, too, as I spent most of my time in Nepal in the flat areas.
We arrived in Beni and took the first hotel we could find-a sparse place with squat toilets and musty blankets, but it would do.
The boys had their first daal bhat, and weren't sick, afterwards!
3/1/15
We woke early, had sandwiches and bananas for breakfast (Graham had a delectable peanut butter, banana and tuna affair).
Our plan was to find a bus or jeep to take us up into Mustang, where we would spend the next two full days hiking around, before we flew back out.
At that point, I was used to paying local prices for transportation, and the like (one of the benefits of speaking the language), but being so far from home, in an area usually riddled with tourists meant that we were being charged 100%-200% above local prices. For this reason, we decided to take a bus up to the next town on the journey, Tato Pani (literally, Hot Water). This cramped, bumpy ride took about 90 minutes. We were immediately taken into the "registration office" (a shack on the side of the road) to have our papers checked, as we were now officially in Lower Mustang.
After having our passes stamped, it was time to find a ride up to our final stop, Lamjung.
Unfortunately, there appeared to be not a single working vehicle in sight. After dropping us, and only us, off in Tato Pani, the local bus continued 30 minutes up the road, it was the only bus of the day. I finally tracked down a worker in a local tea shop who told me that there was a small chance that we could pay a driver to take us to the next stop, but that beyond that the road was snowed in. We decided that it was best to spend the night in Tato Pani, hope the snow melted, and try to get further up, the next day.
We were directed to the nicest hotel in town, a large yellow building with stunning views of the Himalayas. We were the only guests, save one and were immediately shown to another sparse room.
We spent the afternoon in the hot springs (with a dozen fat, underwear clad Nepali men) and eating the remarkably good food the hotel owner cooked us. She had apparently learned how to make Mexican food from an American cookbook that she'd found.
As we were sitting down to dinner, we met the only other guest. He was an American who had been staying in the hotel for 8 days an appeared to be hammered drunk. As we were eating, we got to witness his animated conversations with imagined dinner guests. We locked the door, that night.
4/1/15
Woke early in hopes of finally making it to our destination. After more frustrating conversations with locals, we determined that it was very, very risky to try and keep going. There was more snow on the roads, and we could still only be guaranteed to reach the next highest town, 30 minutes away. We could have gotten snowed in, there, unable to get back down to Pokhara, as well as unable to get up North to make our plane.
We called the travel agency and confirmed that we could cancel our flight for a small loss and were befriended by an American man and his wife who were building a school in Tato Pani. He had spent years in the region and so was able to negotiate a reasonable rate for a taxi to take us all the way back to Pokhara, finally, a small bit of luck.
We arrived in Pokhara by 3pm, weary from our frustrating journey. We spent the rest of the day playing cards and drinking in our favorite restaurant.
5/1/15
Tyson had signed up to do a paragliding outing during the morning, so Graham and I went and got the worst massages of our lives(freezing room, too much attention on massaging our butts and no real pressure on any real knots), so we decided to start our journey down South with a half-day bus ride to Palpa.
We were loaded onto another local bus by 2 pm, after many more frustrating attempts at travel arranging. The journey was beautiful but frightening, as it took place, once again, in semi-darkness. To make matters worse, our only bright spot, the chance to stay in a nice hotel room, in a PC approved hotel, that night, was ruined when a fellow volunteer called to tell me that a PC manager was also stuck in Palpa and would bust me if he caught me out of site, hundreds of miles away from Dang.
After the bus dropped us off in a foggy, cold, dark market place, 20 minutes outside of Palpa, we secured a taxi to take us into town. Our driver had a friend who ran a hotel(of course), where we decided to stay the night. It was a pretty dingy place, but he had know PC volunteers that had lived in Palpa in the 80s, and it was too late to go wandering the foggy streets of Palpa, looking for another place.
We had more daal bhat, this time eaten on the floor of our room. This also marked the first time that Graham used the squat toilet. We fell into bed.
6/1/15
We rose later than normal, packed our things and prepared for the journey from Palpa to Butwal, the transit stop on the East-West highway, on the way to the southwest, to visit Dang.
I slunk through the streets, praying that my PC manager wouldn't spot me. We made it safely onto the bus and had a healthy breakfast of boiled eggs and Nepali Cheetos.
The ride was long and uneventful, but the longest ride on a local Nepali bus that the boys had yet experienced. I kept comforting them with the knowledge that on the other side of the trip was an American level dream hotel known as Darcy's.
Darcy's was probably my favorite place in Nepal. It had clean, white sheets, hot showers, cable, air conditioning, American food and gleaming marble floors-it was heaven. It was also 1/10 of my monthly earnings for one night. PCVs did not stay there often, but when we did, it was magical.
We arrived at Darcy's just in time for me to be violently ill.
Our plan had been to drop our stuff off at the hotel and immediately go further south to Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha. I was far too weak to make the nearly 6 hour round-trip journey, so we just napped, ate American food and basked in the air conditioning and the glow from the cable.
That night Tyson fell very ill, with a high fever. We were worried about having to make the 8 hour trip from Butwal to my village, the next day. I gave him all the medications that I had packed, just in case, and prayed for more luck the next day.
7/1/15
Tyson woke feeling a bit better, with enough energy to get onto a bus. It is possible to get a nice bus from Butwal to Kathmandu, as people going that direction tend to have more disposable income/may potentially be tourists, but from Butwal to Dang there are only the purple junkers that I had come to know. We boarded one of these for the final push.
It was rough. It's a hard trip, even for someone that's used to it, but add to that being much bigger than a normal Nepali, and thus having much less space, and it's downright miserable.
We arrived in Tulsipur with two hours to spare before the bus to Baibang left. We had snacks at Delight Corner, the Dang PCV haunt of choice-it was a weird mixing of my two worlds.
We finally boarded the bus to home. After the normal hour plus ride, we arrived to my whole family in the the courtyard, which had been decorated for our arrival. We were greeted with tika and malas(flower necklaces).
I gave the boys a tour of the house and grounds and then they had their first Chaudhary family daal bhaat(my favorite). They ate enough to make my Hajur Ama happy, meaning, just enough.
We played some cards in the dark, with head lamps and turned in early.
7/2/15
This was our first day not being on a bus in what felt like forever. We spent it wandering around the village-seeing the school, shops, field, health posts, etc.
The boys were still feeling tired and a bit sick, so we got to take things at the village pace, which was nice.
After more cards in the dark, we retired early, ready for another long, long day on the bus.
7/3/15
Saying goodbye to the family was surprisingly poignant-we took pictures of the boys with my family-such an amazing joining of worlds-I felt very loved and lucky!
The boys and my family sad long goodbyes, through me, with exchanges of gifts and thanks.
We hustled onto the bus for the ride to Tulsipur. It was loud and packed, as usual.
When we got to Tulsipur, we ran to get tickets for the trip to Bairahwa-a town three hours east of Butwal, our usual stop on the way to Kathmandu. We had decided to make the long trip in one day, leaving us a day to spend in Chitwan National Park-riding elephants and taking jungle safaris. On a good day it's a 9 hour bus ride.
It was not a good day.
The bus was supposed to arrive right before 11 am. It arrived 90 minutes late.
We were supposed to be able to put our stuff in the back, or on the top. Both were completely packed, so we had to stash our things in the aisles of the bus.
The only thing that makes the long distance buses better than the shorter distance ones is that they are only allowed to sell one ticket per seat, meaning that they are significantly less packed than the shorter distance "commuter" buses. This was not the case with this bus.
Even though Nepal is a poorer country than India, there are many poor Indians, many from the Dalit(Untouchable) caste, who come up through the Southern border to find work. These people are very poor, do not speak Nepali and are extremely vulnerable to harassment and expolitation.
In this case, the bus driver had exploited them by allowing several entire families with their children, animals and all of their possessions onto one bus.
This was not only uncomfortable for them, but extremely frustrating and uncomfortable for the other people stuck on the bus with them.
As previously mentioned, Tyson and Graham had to keep their things in the aisle, where people continously walked over them.
In addition, the families seemed to have no qualms about yelling back and forth, the distance of the bus.
They also let their dog and naked children run around the bus, pooping wherever they felt like it.
At one point, Graham reached down to get somethign out of his bag and reached direcly into human shit right on top of it. I furiously yelled at the bus helper to tell the people to clean up after themselves, although they denied that the mess was from them. They eventually half-heartedly cleaned it up. Graham almost lost it.
Finally, the man nearest us began to beg us for money. I understood enough Hindi to realize what he was asking, but not enough to explain why I was not going to give him money. He continued to beg for several hours until finally a nice Nepali woman who also spoke Hindi and Englsih told him to leave us alone.
We were all packed onto this bus, miserable, cramped, sweating, smelling and to make matters worse, they kept needing to stop-what felt like every 45 minutes.
I had the tools and practice to zone out, as much as possible. Poor Tyson and Graham were left to suffer and seeth in anger.
After 7 1/2 hours we arrived in Butwal, with at least three more hours to go. We decided to just cut our loses, ask for some of our money back, and bail off there. The bus driver did not argue when we demanded some of our money back.
Tyson screamed in frustration the minute we were off the bus.
I had to run to the bathroom.
We spent another glorious night in Darcy's, planning for the half day we would be able to spend in Chitwan, the next day.
7/4/15
We woke late, grabbed a quick breakfast and hopped on the first bus to Chitwan.
The day before there had been some chatter about possible road closures due to political unrest and while I was on the bus, without Peace Corps permission, I got a call from out Safety and Security Coordiantor warning us that there was a Bhanda(road closure) starting the next day, for the entire area between Butwal and Kathmandu, including Kathmandu. This meant that the boys would possibly be stuck in Chitwan and not be able to make their flights home. With some discussion, we realized that the most responsible thing to do would be to call off our Chitwan adventure and just have the boys continue on to KTM, that day. If worst came to worst, they would have to walk to the airport, but at least they would be in the same city.
It was horrible to realize that my visit was going to end two days early, under such bad circumstances. Those were a sad couple of hours on the bus.
As soon as we got off the bus in Bhairahwa, we hustled to the bus park to find the boys a micro bus to take them the last 4 hours to KTM. Goodbyes were tearfully said(on my part) and they sped off. The only relief I had was knowing that Ben was stuck in KTM and would be able to look after them until they left.
Tyson had slipped me some money so that I could stay in a hotel in Butwal, because otherwise I would have had to spend another 9 hours on a bus, back to Tulsipur, stay in a shitty hotel over night and then walk the three hours back to my site.
Instead I found a local bus to take me back to Butwal, crying in the back, the whole time.
7/5/15-7/10/15
As tends to happen in Nepal, my return to village did not go as planned.
I spent that first night in Darcy's-luxuriating in the soft white bed and room service. I had enough money to stay there for two nights, three if I absolutely had to.
Of course, the road closures lasted longer than expected. I was stranded in Butwal, with no access to ATMs(which are not open 24/7, as in America, but close when banks close-as they do during Bhandas). Not only that, but PC did not know that I was out of site, so I could not ask them to for help to get back to my site. I just kept hoping that the bhandha would end so I could get home before they found out.
Finally, on the fourth day, I had to move to another hotel, as my money was running out. I moved into the only available single room in a very shaddy hotel-it had a shared bathroom and what appeared to be blood on the walls.
After some daal bhat from teh hotel restaurant, I was violently ill all night. I spent two miserable nights there, wandering the streets during the day, stopping by the bus station hoping to get onto something going the right direction, watching old episodes of TV shows on my laptop, at night, and hoping to not get caught by the PC staff members also stuck in Butwal.
7/11/15
Finally, on the sixth day, the Bhanda broke and I was able to get on a bus going towards Tulsipur.
I got into Tulsipur at noon on that day, spent a relieved couple of hours in our favorite restaurant, Delight Corner, and then headed down to the bus park.
Of course, since I have the worst luck ever, there were no buses running to my village. This meant that, after everythign I'd been through, I was gonig to have to try and find a taxi to take me 2/3 of the way, and walk the last hour.
That was one of the longest walks I've ever taken. I was rarely so glad to be home.
And so went the best worst vacation that Tyson, Graham and I ever had. So far.
Graham's flight was delayed, so Tyson flew into Nepal, first.
I had made a sign that simply greeted him "Asshole." I showed up at the airport way too early, in anticipation. It took him nearly 45 minutes to get through customs and get his visa-mostly because of the complete lack of directions for how to actually apply for the visa-just a random series of tables and people to speak with. Tyson started with Step 3, back tracked to Step 2 and then finally figured out where Step 1 was began the process for real.
He finally made it into the freezing, concrete, open-air greeting area around 4pm.
We hoped in a taxi and made our way back to the hotel. I felt validated when Tyson admitted how much dirtier Kathmandu was than Asuncion.
We decided to go meet Ben and then wander around Thamel for a bit-tourist shopping, chess, etc. By 6 we were starving and got Tibetan food for dinner.
After dinner Tyson crashed hard, so I went to the airport, alone, to pick up Graham from his 11pm flight. I was also tasked with trying to find Ben's cousin's lost suitcase-I got very chummy with the security guards at the airport, to the point that the let me just hang by the baggage claim, instead of outside with the rabble! We never did find the bag that night, but she eventually got it back.
Graham was nearly an hour late to arrive by baggage claim-he had an even harder time applying for a visa, as there were only three pens for use in the entire application area! Ahhh Nepal.
29/12/14-30/12/14
We spent the next two days seeing Kathmandu. The boys fought there jet lag pretty well, but usually crashed by late afternoon. The first day we went to see the (now destroyed) old palace section of Kathmandu, and toured it with Ben's family. We also saw the monkey temple and wandered around Thamel.
The second day we were all pretty wiped out and spent most of the day on the roof of the hotel with Jewels, drinking, eating and chatting.
31/12/14
Early on New Years Eve we got up and got on a tourist bus to Pokhara with Jewels and her friend. Tyson slept the whole time, but the rest of us amused ourselves by playing "Fuck, Marry, Kill" but with food. For instance: Fuck, Marry, or Kill: Cheese Fries, Nachos, Mozzarella Sticks. My choice would be to kill the nachos, fuck the cheese fries(metaphorically speaking) and marry the mozzarella sticks. Much fun was had, although we were starving by the time we got to Pokhara.
Tyson and Graham's dad had surprised us with a fancy hotel room for New Years-so our first stop was to check in and shower.
Of course, as soon as we got there we realized that Nepal had happened and they had lost our reservation. The only room they had available was a shitty two-bed affair that would leave me sleeping on the floor. It did have hot showers, however, so we showered up, got dressed and decided to start our revelrous night.
We began by getting some food and playing Cards Against Humanity with Bora, Nekeia, Jewels and her friend. I was relieved that everyone got along.
We went back to Bora and Nekeia's hotel room to have some drinks.
By 9 pm we decided it was time to hit the streets. Pokhara was packed with people-more Nepalis than tourists, which I was surprised about. We mostly wandered around, eating food from street vendors and dancing to random music coming out of clubs. The most memorable part of the night was our visit to the Mortal Combat Club(not it's real name), a Nepali dance club. Nepali dance clubs are both similar and different than American strip clubs. They look similar-kinda skeezy, red light, a big stage with a pole. They are different in that there is no actual stripping and that it's apparently normal for families with children to visit them. We sat in the front row with families with small babies on either side of us. For an hour various groups of people-couples, groups of only men, groups with men and women and single women came out and performed dance numbers. Most of them were not sexually provocative in any way. It was weird and hilarious.
The rest of the night we spent wandering around to various bars and outside seating areas. As the night went on, and the Nepali men got drunker, my night got worse. I have never been groped so much in my life. There were times when there were several pairs of hands on my body at once. I was so uncomfortable that I started to cry. By the end of the night Graham has to walk with his arm tightly around me, pushing our way through the crowd. By 11:30 we had found a picnic table near an old Christmas tree to perch at. Earlier in the night we had found 1,000 rupees on the ground and used it to buy a bottle of champagne, for midnight. As the clock struck midnight we all kissed and hugged and, I believe, reflected on where we'd been when the year 2014 had come, and where we'd be when 2016 arrived.
1/1/15
As you would imagine, the next morning everyone was feeling pretty slow. We had planned to make our plans for our trip up into the Himalayas, that day, but instead we spent the entire day in our correct hotel room, watching a music countdown on Indian VH1.
2/1/15
We were now behind a day. We spend the first half of the 2nd running around trying to figure out our plan for our trip up to Mustang. We finally decided on taking public transportation up there. We would get up into Mustang by the night of the 3rd then have three days to hike around, and then fly out, back to Pokhara. By 2 pm we were on a bus up into the Himalayas. This was the beginning of the really adventurous part of the trip, the part that many tourists do not take-and we were starting it on a public bus, Tyson and Graham's first Nepali public bus.
The ride was pretty scary-it was dark by 2/3 of the way through the trip, and the narrow mountain roads were fairly new to me, too, as I spent most of my time in Nepal in the flat areas.
We arrived in Beni and took the first hotel we could find-a sparse place with squat toilets and musty blankets, but it would do.
The boys had their first daal bhat, and weren't sick, afterwards!
3/1/15
We woke early, had sandwiches and bananas for breakfast (Graham had a delectable peanut butter, banana and tuna affair).
Our plan was to find a bus or jeep to take us up into Mustang, where we would spend the next two full days hiking around, before we flew back out.
At that point, I was used to paying local prices for transportation, and the like (one of the benefits of speaking the language), but being so far from home, in an area usually riddled with tourists meant that we were being charged 100%-200% above local prices. For this reason, we decided to take a bus up to the next town on the journey, Tato Pani (literally, Hot Water). This cramped, bumpy ride took about 90 minutes. We were immediately taken into the "registration office" (a shack on the side of the road) to have our papers checked, as we were now officially in Lower Mustang.
After having our passes stamped, it was time to find a ride up to our final stop, Lamjung.
Unfortunately, there appeared to be not a single working vehicle in sight. After dropping us, and only us, off in Tato Pani, the local bus continued 30 minutes up the road, it was the only bus of the day. I finally tracked down a worker in a local tea shop who told me that there was a small chance that we could pay a driver to take us to the next stop, but that beyond that the road was snowed in. We decided that it was best to spend the night in Tato Pani, hope the snow melted, and try to get further up, the next day.
We were directed to the nicest hotel in town, a large yellow building with stunning views of the Himalayas. We were the only guests, save one and were immediately shown to another sparse room.
We spent the afternoon in the hot springs (with a dozen fat, underwear clad Nepali men) and eating the remarkably good food the hotel owner cooked us. She had apparently learned how to make Mexican food from an American cookbook that she'd found.
As we were sitting down to dinner, we met the only other guest. He was an American who had been staying in the hotel for 8 days an appeared to be hammered drunk. As we were eating, we got to witness his animated conversations with imagined dinner guests. We locked the door, that night.
4/1/15
Woke early in hopes of finally making it to our destination. After more frustrating conversations with locals, we determined that it was very, very risky to try and keep going. There was more snow on the roads, and we could still only be guaranteed to reach the next highest town, 30 minutes away. We could have gotten snowed in, there, unable to get back down to Pokhara, as well as unable to get up North to make our plane.
We called the travel agency and confirmed that we could cancel our flight for a small loss and were befriended by an American man and his wife who were building a school in Tato Pani. He had spent years in the region and so was able to negotiate a reasonable rate for a taxi to take us all the way back to Pokhara, finally, a small bit of luck.
We arrived in Pokhara by 3pm, weary from our frustrating journey. We spent the rest of the day playing cards and drinking in our favorite restaurant.
5/1/15
Tyson had signed up to do a paragliding outing during the morning, so Graham and I went and got the worst massages of our lives(freezing room, too much attention on massaging our butts and no real pressure on any real knots), so we decided to start our journey down South with a half-day bus ride to Palpa.
We were loaded onto another local bus by 2 pm, after many more frustrating attempts at travel arranging. The journey was beautiful but frightening, as it took place, once again, in semi-darkness. To make matters worse, our only bright spot, the chance to stay in a nice hotel room, in a PC approved hotel, that night, was ruined when a fellow volunteer called to tell me that a PC manager was also stuck in Palpa and would bust me if he caught me out of site, hundreds of miles away from Dang.
After the bus dropped us off in a foggy, cold, dark market place, 20 minutes outside of Palpa, we secured a taxi to take us into town. Our driver had a friend who ran a hotel(of course), where we decided to stay the night. It was a pretty dingy place, but he had know PC volunteers that had lived in Palpa in the 80s, and it was too late to go wandering the foggy streets of Palpa, looking for another place.
We had more daal bhat, this time eaten on the floor of our room. This also marked the first time that Graham used the squat toilet. We fell into bed.
6/1/15
We rose later than normal, packed our things and prepared for the journey from Palpa to Butwal, the transit stop on the East-West highway, on the way to the southwest, to visit Dang.
I slunk through the streets, praying that my PC manager wouldn't spot me. We made it safely onto the bus and had a healthy breakfast of boiled eggs and Nepali Cheetos.
The ride was long and uneventful, but the longest ride on a local Nepali bus that the boys had yet experienced. I kept comforting them with the knowledge that on the other side of the trip was an American level dream hotel known as Darcy's.
Darcy's was probably my favorite place in Nepal. It had clean, white sheets, hot showers, cable, air conditioning, American food and gleaming marble floors-it was heaven. It was also 1/10 of my monthly earnings for one night. PCVs did not stay there often, but when we did, it was magical.
We arrived at Darcy's just in time for me to be violently ill.
Our plan had been to drop our stuff off at the hotel and immediately go further south to Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha. I was far too weak to make the nearly 6 hour round-trip journey, so we just napped, ate American food and basked in the air conditioning and the glow from the cable.
That night Tyson fell very ill, with a high fever. We were worried about having to make the 8 hour trip from Butwal to my village, the next day. I gave him all the medications that I had packed, just in case, and prayed for more luck the next day.
7/1/15
Tyson woke feeling a bit better, with enough energy to get onto a bus. It is possible to get a nice bus from Butwal to Kathmandu, as people going that direction tend to have more disposable income/may potentially be tourists, but from Butwal to Dang there are only the purple junkers that I had come to know. We boarded one of these for the final push.
It was rough. It's a hard trip, even for someone that's used to it, but add to that being much bigger than a normal Nepali, and thus having much less space, and it's downright miserable.
We arrived in Tulsipur with two hours to spare before the bus to Baibang left. We had snacks at Delight Corner, the Dang PCV haunt of choice-it was a weird mixing of my two worlds.
We finally boarded the bus to home. After the normal hour plus ride, we arrived to my whole family in the the courtyard, which had been decorated for our arrival. We were greeted with tika and malas(flower necklaces).
I gave the boys a tour of the house and grounds and then they had their first Chaudhary family daal bhaat(my favorite). They ate enough to make my Hajur Ama happy, meaning, just enough.
We played some cards in the dark, with head lamps and turned in early.
7/2/15
This was our first day not being on a bus in what felt like forever. We spent it wandering around the village-seeing the school, shops, field, health posts, etc.
The boys were still feeling tired and a bit sick, so we got to take things at the village pace, which was nice.
After more cards in the dark, we retired early, ready for another long, long day on the bus.
7/3/15
Saying goodbye to the family was surprisingly poignant-we took pictures of the boys with my family-such an amazing joining of worlds-I felt very loved and lucky!
The boys and my family sad long goodbyes, through me, with exchanges of gifts and thanks.
We hustled onto the bus for the ride to Tulsipur. It was loud and packed, as usual.
When we got to Tulsipur, we ran to get tickets for the trip to Bairahwa-a town three hours east of Butwal, our usual stop on the way to Kathmandu. We had decided to make the long trip in one day, leaving us a day to spend in Chitwan National Park-riding elephants and taking jungle safaris. On a good day it's a 9 hour bus ride.
It was not a good day.
The bus was supposed to arrive right before 11 am. It arrived 90 minutes late.
We were supposed to be able to put our stuff in the back, or on the top. Both were completely packed, so we had to stash our things in the aisles of the bus.
The only thing that makes the long distance buses better than the shorter distance ones is that they are only allowed to sell one ticket per seat, meaning that they are significantly less packed than the shorter distance "commuter" buses. This was not the case with this bus.
Even though Nepal is a poorer country than India, there are many poor Indians, many from the Dalit(Untouchable) caste, who come up through the Southern border to find work. These people are very poor, do not speak Nepali and are extremely vulnerable to harassment and expolitation.
In this case, the bus driver had exploited them by allowing several entire families with their children, animals and all of their possessions onto one bus.
This was not only uncomfortable for them, but extremely frustrating and uncomfortable for the other people stuck on the bus with them.
As previously mentioned, Tyson and Graham had to keep their things in the aisle, where people continously walked over them.
In addition, the families seemed to have no qualms about yelling back and forth, the distance of the bus.
They also let their dog and naked children run around the bus, pooping wherever they felt like it.
At one point, Graham reached down to get somethign out of his bag and reached direcly into human shit right on top of it. I furiously yelled at the bus helper to tell the people to clean up after themselves, although they denied that the mess was from them. They eventually half-heartedly cleaned it up. Graham almost lost it.
Finally, the man nearest us began to beg us for money. I understood enough Hindi to realize what he was asking, but not enough to explain why I was not going to give him money. He continued to beg for several hours until finally a nice Nepali woman who also spoke Hindi and Englsih told him to leave us alone.
We were all packed onto this bus, miserable, cramped, sweating, smelling and to make matters worse, they kept needing to stop-what felt like every 45 minutes.
I had the tools and practice to zone out, as much as possible. Poor Tyson and Graham were left to suffer and seeth in anger.
After 7 1/2 hours we arrived in Butwal, with at least three more hours to go. We decided to just cut our loses, ask for some of our money back, and bail off there. The bus driver did not argue when we demanded some of our money back.
Tyson screamed in frustration the minute we were off the bus.
I had to run to the bathroom.
We spent another glorious night in Darcy's, planning for the half day we would be able to spend in Chitwan, the next day.
7/4/15
We woke late, grabbed a quick breakfast and hopped on the first bus to Chitwan.
The day before there had been some chatter about possible road closures due to political unrest and while I was on the bus, without Peace Corps permission, I got a call from out Safety and Security Coordiantor warning us that there was a Bhanda(road closure) starting the next day, for the entire area between Butwal and Kathmandu, including Kathmandu. This meant that the boys would possibly be stuck in Chitwan and not be able to make their flights home. With some discussion, we realized that the most responsible thing to do would be to call off our Chitwan adventure and just have the boys continue on to KTM, that day. If worst came to worst, they would have to walk to the airport, but at least they would be in the same city.
It was horrible to realize that my visit was going to end two days early, under such bad circumstances. Those were a sad couple of hours on the bus.
As soon as we got off the bus in Bhairahwa, we hustled to the bus park to find the boys a micro bus to take them the last 4 hours to KTM. Goodbyes were tearfully said(on my part) and they sped off. The only relief I had was knowing that Ben was stuck in KTM and would be able to look after them until they left.
Tyson had slipped me some money so that I could stay in a hotel in Butwal, because otherwise I would have had to spend another 9 hours on a bus, back to Tulsipur, stay in a shitty hotel over night and then walk the three hours back to my site.
Instead I found a local bus to take me back to Butwal, crying in the back, the whole time.
7/5/15-7/10/15
As tends to happen in Nepal, my return to village did not go as planned.
I spent that first night in Darcy's-luxuriating in the soft white bed and room service. I had enough money to stay there for two nights, three if I absolutely had to.
Of course, the road closures lasted longer than expected. I was stranded in Butwal, with no access to ATMs(which are not open 24/7, as in America, but close when banks close-as they do during Bhandas). Not only that, but PC did not know that I was out of site, so I could not ask them to for help to get back to my site. I just kept hoping that the bhandha would end so I could get home before they found out.
Finally, on the fourth day, I had to move to another hotel, as my money was running out. I moved into the only available single room in a very shaddy hotel-it had a shared bathroom and what appeared to be blood on the walls.
After some daal bhat from teh hotel restaurant, I was violently ill all night. I spent two miserable nights there, wandering the streets during the day, stopping by the bus station hoping to get onto something going the right direction, watching old episodes of TV shows on my laptop, at night, and hoping to not get caught by the PC staff members also stuck in Butwal.
7/11/15
Finally, on the sixth day, the Bhanda broke and I was able to get on a bus going towards Tulsipur.
I got into Tulsipur at noon on that day, spent a relieved couple of hours in our favorite restaurant, Delight Corner, and then headed down to the bus park.
Of course, since I have the worst luck ever, there were no buses running to my village. This meant that, after everythign I'd been through, I was gonig to have to try and find a taxi to take me 2/3 of the way, and walk the last hour.
That was one of the longest walks I've ever taken. I was rarely so glad to be home.
And so went the best worst vacation that Tyson, Graham and I ever had. So far.
