Nepal 5, The Bone Shaker

Today we travelled from Koshi Tappu to Chitwan.
The staff from Koshi Camp all came to wave us goodbye includung the lady who washed our clothes, it was really rather sweet. I think I would have liked to stay longer and just hung out in the gardens there.
However ee travelled by bus and I think the best way to descibe the 363k journey of 11 hours is to tell you what one of our Nature Trekkers said when my dad asked him if he’d had a nap ” No, its rather difficult when your riding a pneumatic drill!”
The roads were terrible, punctuated by short bursts of reasonable. The driving was also rather hair raising with us giving a cow a wide berth on the nearside, pulling into the oncoming lane and then being undertaken by another bus! Everyone was tooting. Tooting to overtake, tooting to say your overtaking, tooting to acknowledge your overtaking and so on.
At one point a tyre burst on a lorry ahead of us and we all jumped.

There are no railways here so everything travels this way or by plane, I completely understand why my friend Durga does not want me to travel distance by bus now.

Lots of lorries (decorated) mopeds and motorbikes everywhere.

We passed lots more dusty towns, I gernerally dislike towns but, despite these being every thing I despise and more, dirty, dust, noisy and very busy, I found them so fascinating. I took quite literally hundreds of pictures of them!

I think because there are so few main roads they are prone to Ribbon development so you are never out in the countryside fully on these routes.
Dad and I were speculating about some of the shops that had an “Open for fun” sign! You can guess what we were thinking…….,.. and .we were wrong, it was a Tuborg Beer advert!

At one point we ran out of road, the bridge across a river bed had been washed away in the monsoon and everyone was crossing the dry river bed. The new bridge was meant to be under construction but apparently that had been forgotten about.

Loo stops were in woodland because the toilets here are a health hazard. Needless to say from now on in I’ll be squirting insect repellent down the back of my trousers! That was the only day I was bitten!
When we arrived at our destination we all felt wobbly as if we had been on a boat!
The hotel Jungle Villas at Chitwan more than made up for it though, welcomed with wet towels and big smiles. I’ll tell you more soon.