The following morning was another early wakeup, having to be out by 5.30 to catch a 3 hour bus to the border at Sunauli. Finding the bus was relatively straight forward, getting on at around 6 to the welcome of an appalling bollywood film that was being played at full volume through the tiny television at the front of the bus. Sooo the time passed by as we drifted off to sleep again, up until a mile away from reaching the border, where things took an exciting turn for the worse. Pcture the scene... a lorry in the lane to the left, an oil tanker in the lane to the right. Now our evidentally inept bus driver decided to cruise down the road at a solid 50mph, however the also retarded oil tanker who hadnt quite worked out how to use his mirrors decided to pull out just at the wrong moment, cutting into our lane just as we reached him. Our bus driver admittedly did a good job at avoiding a head on collision swerving left to try and squeeze inbetween the lorry and the oil tanker; due to the speed he was going and the poor braking distances the bus could manage, we ploud straight into the sides of the two other vehicles, wedging us between the lorry and oil tanker. We'd crashed! Luckily for all of us, everyone walked out without a scratch, say walk out, I mean clambering out of the drivers window... Looking back on it now, we were extremely lucky! After retrieving our bags from the back of the bus we headed to the front to assess the damage, at which point, we suddenly heard shouting from behind us, looking round finding all three drivers in a punch up walloping each other in sheer anger and to be honest each completely oblivious whose fault it actually was. We realised that getting back in the bus and driving the last part of the journey probably wasnt going to happen, so we walked the last mile to the border. Our trekking had started a ittle while before we had anticipated.
Upon arrival at the border we got stamped out of India and walked right through into “no-mans-land” where neither country own the small strip between border posts. We then had to go to the Nepalise border police to be stamped into Nepal, a process we thought would take ages, but we were through in about 10 minutes! We then visited a tourist information office to find the bus to Pokhara, and to change our money. Immediately we were struck by the friendliness of the Nepailse people who showed us to the tourist info/bus stop etc with no air of wanting a tip or a fee. So after buying bus tickets from the tourist info guy we hopped onto a jeep to be driven to the bus stop. Now this jeep was made for about 6 people max. We had about 15. 10 inside and 5 clinging to the back. Thankfully it was a short journey and we got off to be shown to our next bus, the bus to Pokhara which would take 8 hours. It looked okay at first, relatively comfy seats and a quick bus driver. However as the hours passed, and as we drove over some pretty awful potholes, we took a fair beating. Sleeping was out of the question - try sleeping in what felt like an eathquake at point 6 on the richter scale – so we instead tried to appreciate the scenery around us, which again was a bit of a mission seeing as the bus was hurtling around tight mountain bends with huge drops to one side scaring the bejesus out of us.
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