One Day on the Road
Last week, Amit and I returned from our trip around central-western Nepal. Over the course of twelve days, we made seven stops, interviewed and/or photographed over twenty women, and spent somewhere around forty hours in buses. Trying to detail all of our experiences in one post would be a lengthy and tiresome endeavor for both me as a writer and you as a reader. Instead, here is one day that nicely encapsulates both the extreme generosity we received from those helping us and the crazy schedule we were following on the road.
It was supposed to be an “easy” day. The night before, Amit and I had arrived in Pokhara, a beautiful lakeside town overrun with backpackers, yoga enthusiasts, and trekkers. That morning, we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before hopping on a bus for the quick 1-2 hour ride to Damauli. Our plan was to interview a couple of women there and then continue on a few more hours to Gorkha, homeland of the Gurkha soldiers and the original seat of King Prithvi Narayan Shah, who conquered and unified what is now known as modern day Nepal.
After promptly falling asleep on the bus, I am awoken by Amit: “There’s a problem.” The bus is stopped on the side of the road. “There’s something blocking the road. They say we have to get out and walk the rest of the way.” I look out my window and, sure enough, there is a line of cars/buses/trucks extending far down the paved road.
We are 23 kilometers from Damauli. With all of our luggage and the sweltering heat, walking is not an option. We find out that the road block is caused by local members of the community who are protesting after two young boys were killed by a bulldozer earlier that week. Amit calls our contact in Damauli, journalist Soni Khaniya. “She says she has journalist friends who will come and pick us up and take us through the protest.” All we have to do is get to a hospital, which we are told is a 10-15 minute walk down the road.
Shouldering our bags and wiping our brows, we begin lugging everything through the thick heat. To our left, we pass the traffic: tourists looking bored in air conditioned buses, truck drivers sitting in the shade of their vehicles, some cars seemingly completely deserted. After 20 minutes, we are stopped by the police and told we can go no further. Through the dust in the distance, I can see rocks are covering the road. Amit tells me they are placed there by the protesters to stop traffic and to use as weapons against the police.
I am starting to think that this is more serious than I had thought when, as if to confirm my suspicions, a vehicle of police in riot gear and an ambulance pass by us at full speed. We hear rumor that a police officer has been hit in the head with a cinder block. After calling our journalist saviors to let them know where we are, we grab a coke and wait to be saved. About an hour later, journalist extraodinaire Pradeep Kaphle walks out of the dusty haze. Unfortunately, he had to leave his bike on the other side of the picket line and had walked the remaining two kilometers. He encourages us to sit tight while he tries to persuade the police to let us cross over.
30 minutes later, Pradeep comes over to our hideout under a tree. “In an hour, an ambulance will be going from our side across the picket line. We’ll get a ride in that.” An hour later, Pradeep returns. “I don’t think the ambulance is coming and I don’t think the protest is going to end anytime soon.” We decide to walk, but after about 5 minutes, Pradeep hails down a guy on a scooter who is going in the same direction and convinces him to give me a ride to the other side. In a few blissful breezy moments, I am dropped off where all the cars are lined up waiting in the opposite direction. My arrival, understandably, gets a few weird stares.
I buy some apples and guzzle water. A bit later, Pradeep arrives. “Where’s Amit?” Pradeep hailed down someone for Amit as well, but he hadn’t been dropped off where I was and isn’t answering his phone. Pradeep guesses that the bike must have taken him all the way to Damauli, so without further ado, I hop on the back of Pradeep’s friend’s motorcycle and off to Damauli we go. My driver wears a vest emblazoned with PRESS and stops here and there to take photographs of the mass of bored drivers, who gawk at the foreigner on the back of a journalist’s bike.
For twenty surreal minutes we cruise past green rice fields and wooden farmhouses. With my camera bag and purse wedged in between me and the journalist, I hold tightly onto the press vest and laugh out loud at how this day has turned out.
Of course, it didn’t end there.
In Damauli, I am reunited with Amit. Pradeep, who we hale as our savior, introduces us to Soni, our contact. They take us to a nearby hotel, where three women wait to be interviewed. We pull out the gear and get straight down to business. Afterwards, we scarf down some daal bhaat before loading onto our next bus, fingers crossed that this one will take us where we need to go.
After an hour, we learn that the bus driver forgot to tell us to get off at the place where we needed to catch a connection to Gorkha. Twenty minutes further, the driver hails down a bus going in the opposite direction. It’s jam packed so we cling onto handrails by the open door for the ride back to our stop. Luckily, when we arrive there is a bus about to leave for Gorkha. Unfortunately, the only seats available are in the last row --- the last row being so tiny that even I, being on the short side, cannot possibly sit in a normal position. But a seat is a seat and we are more than ready to get on the road.
Two hours later, as the bus crawls up the dark mountainside, I mentally prepare myself for collapsing into bed. But, wait, why is the bus crawling? Wait, why is it stopping? An ominous banging comes from the engine. Outside, it starts to rain. The driver tries to turn the bus back on, unsuccessfully. Passengers are already unloading into the dark as I cross every body part possible in an effort to impart good luck on the tired engine. Just as Amit and I begin to gather our things, the bus jumps to life. Well, jump might be over doing it, but the bus continues it’s crawling and soon enough we arrive in one sweaty, tired heap in Gorkha.
It turns out that another one of Pradeep and Soni’s journalist friends, Bhim Lal Shrestha, has already made us a reservation at a hotel, steps from the bus stop. As we stagger to our rooms, I can’t help but smile thinking about this very special brand of Nepali hospitality, accompanying us like a guardian angel throughout our trip, escorting us through a picket line, contributing to the project, booking rooms before we even arrive––and that was just one day.