"The road is the goal"

"The road is the goal" - a beautiful travelling thought shared by our new Norwegian friend, Andreas. However, for this blog entry, I shall use a bit of artistic license. For this tale, "surviving the road is the goal" paints a more vivid picture of what is to come.

At 7.30am on Saturday 17 September, Med, Luc (our new, French ami) and I squeezed ourselves into child-sized seats on a bus hurling north from Kathmandu to the tiny settlement of Syabrubesi, the end of the road and the start of our Langtang valley trek. The valley lies just south of the Tibetan border and boasts surrounding peaks of up to 7227 metres - and would be our adventure playground of the next eight days.

There is no such thing as a straight road in Nepal, and flat roads are hard to come by. We climbed up and down, and down and up, the green hills beyond the Kathmandu valley, weaving and shuddering, this way and that, taking the blind corners at heroic speends and producing strangled horn noises every few seconds (in case the person at the back was in danger of getting

40 winks).

As the bus gathers steam, we think ourselves lucky enough to have a seat (albeit cramped, damp and designed for bum-numbing discomfort). The aisle is full of people standing, their

bodies swaying constantly with tilt of the bus, and the roof is full of people and cargo. I could see more pairs of feet above my head than I could count before we'd hit another pothole and I would be catapulted three inches out of my seat. Concentrating on hugging the seat in front of me was my only option for five long hours.

A shrieking circus of people, music and movement is unravelling in front of me; we're starting and stopping, people are sprinting after the bus, jumping on to the handles on the outside, climbing up and down from the roof while it's moving and hauling on cumbersome tyres or ancient canvas bags filled with onions.

It's one thump on the metal exterior to stop the bus and two thumps for go - sometimes we'd join in when the driver and ticket collector appeared to be time-wasting or trying to get more customers onto this full-to-the-brim steel trap.

Early on in the ride, a man lost his balance and pushed his dirty, canvas bag against my arm. I sniffed at the now damp patch on my arm, and gagged. It would soon transpire that there was a chicken in the bag, which had by now been swung up into the narrow luggage rack opposite me. That stunned chicken, with its unbearable stench, would haunt me for the rest of the journey. It's frightened, glassy eye kept peering down at me as it opened and closed its beak in silent protest.

By 10.30am, it's time for Daal Bhaat. As we hopped of the bus on our shaky legs, I watched a Nepali man spray vomit down the side of the bus. Sick count to date: three, and counting - I had unfortunately already witnessed someone throwing up on the seat opposite me. I was in danger of joining the count, so I opted out of Daal Bhaat and mentally prepared myself for the next

journey hell-raiser that was surely around the corner.

It's 1pm now - we've been moving since 7:30am

but travelled less than 70 miles because the road (track) is a series of poorly maintained hairpin bends hugging steep mountain faces. And we make endless stops to cram more people on the top of the bus - I wince each time another person joins the circus. But now we judder to a halt and the bus is leaning forward, rear end in the air. There is shouting and chaos - it seems the road, in the monsoon rains, is no longer passable. We pile out: the 60 plus locals, the bags of onions, the two tyres and, of course, the chicken.

With no instruction or idea, we walk in the same direction as everyone else. The mountain is shrouded in mist but we can feel, and occasionally see, the immediate danger of the sheer drop at the side of the deteriorating track.

Wading through streams and stumbling over large, loose rocks, we are eventually beckoned onto the back of a heavy duty truck. Us, and the 60 locals from the bus. I had at least five people leaning on me and the chicken was still watching me from inside one of the rubber tyres I knelt on. Med eventually had to squat as the small edge of the truck he had claimed early on was taken over by men and children who leaped onto the truck as we jostled along the rubble track. We held onto each other.

We knew we were still quite far from our destination - but stopped asking questions as we were by now afraid of the answers.

The truck journey was a painful 30 minute ride through the mist and the locals who grabbed onto the side of the truck seemed oblivious to the laws of balance - hanging off the cliff edge side so the whole truck had an unnatural lean downwards.

Soon, the breaks screeched and we were piled off once again. A few steps more and there are some more buses in our path. We are ushered on to an already full bus. There's only one place left to go - the roof! I join the scramble up the flimsy ladder to the roof of the bus and am grateful to find a place on the mountain side of the bus next to Luc, but Med has to make do with an unsteady throne of wet tyres.

I soon get that same, stomach-tightening whiff. I say "chicken?" to the man sat next to me and he picks up the bag lodged under his legs. "Chicken," he grins. Somehow, the poor, wretched thing is still alive.

And so begins the worst part of this journey. The bus takes on very recent, active landslides caused by the swell of the monsoon at speed and my grip on the sharp edge of the roof tightens. The heavens open and a sheet of dusty tarp is pulled across the roof-dwellers, which acts as more of a uncontrollable sail than a shelter. With our centre of gravity now sitting really quite high, when we hit exceptionally rough patches of rocks, the whole vehicle begins to sway dramatically. We all scream - and we can hear echoes of screams from down below.

Yet, I am strangely comforted that, from atop the bus, I can envisage my survival jump when the bus slips off the track and down the deathly drop. I count myself as one of the lucky ones that, in the last moments, my fate would be in my own hands.

We chat to the locals to avoid thinking about the rain and the danger. I learn the days of the week in Nepali, and, when more swaying ensues, start chanting them louder and louder, much to the amusement of my audience of locals.

When I think my fingers can't grip on any longer, we reach an army check point for the Langtang National Park and we have to get down from the roof - a temporary arrangement that the army pointlessly enforce for a 20 metre stretch of road next to their base. With many of the locals now at their destination, we join the inside of the bus and meet Marit and Andreas, from Norway, who couldn't believe we had been on the roof all this time.

After being charged again for the journey to Syabrubesi (arguing gets you nowhere on Nepali buses), we then went over the worst part of road so far - the huge, back tyres of the bus nearly giving way to the biggest landslide yet. Once again, I closed my eyes, crossed my fingers and gripped onto a little silk purse filled with good luck charms from friends and family, and the St. Christopher my Grandad carried with him in India, which I also took there myself last year.

And it worked. We were now on a good bit of road again, the chicken had departed at the town

of Dunche and we were soon chatting and laughing, still pumping with adrenalin.

Naturally, the bus couldn't take us all the way to Syabrubesi, that would be too easy. So, we got off and walked the hour to the village as the sun went down - arriving in darkness, but arriving nonetheless.

So, it took us 11 hours, 60 locals, 23 stops, 11 landslides, 5 trekkers, 3 bruises, 3 vehicles and 1 very smelly chicken.

"Surviving the road is the goal."