Beyond limits

Traveling is not always joyful; sometimes it really pushes your limits. The way to Kathmandu (Nepal) was definitely the worst experience we had over the past 3 months.
We started off by train from Kolkata after a whole day of sightseeing in extreme heat and dust. We were already dirty and smelly when we got on the train at 8:30pm. We traveled all night until we reached Patna at 7 in the morning. From there we took a bus somewhere close to the Nepali border. The closer we got to Nepal the worse the roads were getting. Lonely Planet did say that there were dirt roads, but I did not think they would be quite that bad.



After that bus we took a local bus for about an hour. For that whole hour everyone on the bus was facing us and staring as if we were aliens. Some of the local people even dared to touch us.
We crossed the border on a cycle rickshaw then we got on another bus and another last one which took us all the way to Kathmandu in only 11 hours, but by the time we got on this bus, it was already 6pm. We were tired, hungry, smelly and extremely dirty. We could feel the dust grains crush between our teeth, our lungs were getting muddy. I wasn't able to brush my teeth since the day before. I was irritated and I was fed up with the overcrowded bus. The first 2 hours of the bus ride I spent with my legs hanging out the window from knees down. Sleeping on the bus was impossible of course. Top the Mysure experience with serpentine next to huge frightening gorges and imagine it for 11 hours.



Just when I thought this could not possibly get worse, the passenger in front of me, pulled the window open next to his seat, pulled his trousers off, stuck his bum out the window and shat out of the bus on the go.
I was so confused with emotions, I did not know whether to cry or throw up. In the end I just laughed in desperation. "This can NOT be!!!" Thank God, I no longer had my legs dangling from the window...

The bus was moving but the dials of my watch did not seem to move accordingly. I thought we would never ever get to Kathmandu. It seemed never ending, but guess what!? We did get there at 5 am. The city was gray, dead and dusty. What would you expect a city to be like at 5 in the morning? All we cared about was to get horizontal on a still surface as soon as possible.
After a few hours of sleep, we left our hotel for a walk and stepped onto a wonderful, lively street full of little colorful shops, selling intricate Buddhist goods and trekking gear. Suddenly the torture we went through in the previous 33 hours seemed worth it.
:D