Trekking Day 8

We get up at 4:30 am to pack everything up, take some coffee and begin our hike to the bus stop (2 hours away). Shem is going to stay in Gatlang another week, but is walking us to the bus stop to say goodbye. As we are heading out of town Prem comes out of his house and joins us as we walk. It was nice getting to spend that last bit of time with him so early in the morning.

We get our tickets and board the bus with no issues and head home to Kathmandu.

The bus ride was relatively uneventful by Nepali standards. We were overcrowded and I ended up at one point with a crate of chickens in my lap. Later we ran off the road and got stuck in a rice paddy field. I had been sleeping when this happened so I was a little grumpy to have to get off the bus and sit in a field for 30 minutes while they got a truck to pull the bus out. Thankfully, we were at pretty low elevation when it happened and were near a construction site so there was truck and cables available.

We continued our journey with Tom only looking to get us off the bus about 5 or 6 times when he caught the driver talking on his cell phone while taking dangerous curves at high speed. I finally convinced him to stop looking at the driver and to listen to my special “calming” mix on the ipod, made for such occasions. To be fair, the bus ride is by far the hardest part of the journey. But, we arrived safe in Kathmandu, caught a taxi and were just at our gate in Sanepa when the skies opened and an amazing thunderstorm began. It was a good cleansing end to a amazing week.