Monday - down to the Tarai and Chitwan National Park

Monday marked our first day off and the commencement of a few day's vacation. We checked out of our hotel at 5.30 am, left our bags and instruments in store, and said goodbye to 5 star luxury. Now we were on our own and we felt an adventure was about to begin. Driving through the dark, early morning streets of Kathmandu, there were many already walking to work. We saw just one jogger, in Wellington fashion round the streets, while women in beautiful clothes indulged in futile sweeping with switch brooms, moving the dust from one part of the sidewalk to another.

Arriving at the bus depot,a long street with rows of "tourist" buses, we were besieged by hawkers selling everything from newspapers to water and confectionery, and even padlocks, plus beggars and the rest. "Tourist" buses are the better quality buses, though only relative to the dirtier and slower regular buses.

Once on board we commenced a slow tortuous crawl through the traffic and smog taking an hour to put Kathmandu behind us. Coming into the city was truck after truck, all Indian Tatas, presumably bringing goods in from that country, some 14 hours away due south. It was along time before we could open the window because of the smog, but eventually it improved as we began a long winding decent down the Himalayan foothills to the lowlands of the Terai. This took several hours and the way was long,slow, with very narrow roads, often alongside sheer drops. There's much hooting and overtaking in places no Kiwi would dare. Toilet stops were just at the roadside, for male and female, but there was a lunch stop in one of a great many such places, with a Nepal buffet of dhal bhaat plus miscellaneous mixed international stuff, including fries. For the most part, the roads are sealed but with many potholes and occasionally unsealed - either way the travel is bumpy, the seats small and the legroom not for long European legs.

After some 6 hours the countryside changed, became a flat plain and instead of rice paddies rising up sculpture hillsides, rice was grown more extensively and the villages more frequent. Ultimately we dropped off most of the passengers at Sauraha, the biggest city at the edge of Chitwan National Park and them completed our journey to the final terminus a few kilometers further on, a field , in fact, where a bunch of ancient 4wds and jeeps from the lodges awaited. We were exhausted, but spirits rose considerably when we piled into a 1940s vintage Russian jeep and bounced down the track, through traditional villages to our lodge. About 10 hours after our checkout in Kathmandu, we had arrived!