The next day, which was New Years Eve, was driving. We all got into a van, luggage piled high on top, to make the trek from Kathmandu to Tansen. Shailesh said it would be about 8 hours, but it ended up being 10 hours of drive time (and 12 total.) I sat in the front middle seat, to the left of the driver; he kept hitting the side of my leg with the gearshift. To my left was Shailesh & Priasha, his 2-year-old, who was soon replaced by Anika, the 6-year-old. We were seriously packed in this car - there were 17 people, including the kids, the driver, and his assistant, and 14 total seats. Everybody was pressed up against whoever was around them. It was a long drive.
Driving in Nepal is fascinating, and quite insane. They drive on the left, mostly, but that's more of a guideline than a hard rule. In fact, there didn't seem to be any real traffic rules, other than the fact that the bigger guy has the right-of-way, simply because he can. I didn't see any speed limits, road signs, etc. People didn't drive all that fast, but they were always passing on both sides, edging other drivers and pedestrians off the road, driving straight into large crowds of people and vehicles, etc.
There's a wide range of activity on the narrow, trash-filled streets of Kathmandu. There are people walking all around, of course, as many of them don't own any type of car and there is a lot of market activity in the street. There are also bicyclists, and bikes with giant bundles of stuff attached to them (I saw one guy on a bike dragging a huge cart of lumber and building supplies.) There are rickshaws all over the place, slowly and unevenly weaving through traffic. There are a ton of dirt bikes, mopeds, and motorcycles; the skinny roads seemed to be made for these, as they weave in and out of everything else, even driving down very narrow alleys that have barely enough room for two people to walk. Many of the houses and stores had little concrete ramps down the middle of their front steps for bikes. We even saw a family of four crammed onto one moped.
There are also open-backed micro buses, many taxis, larger delivery trucks, etc., all trying to get through the same tiny, hilly streets. As I mentioned before, the streets there don't have names - everything is done by landmarks and helpful passersby; even some of our taxi drivers got us to our destination by repeatedly slowing to the side of the road to ask random people where the place was.
The driving style seems reckless and aggressive when looked at through American eyes, but it's really not. Their traffic just operates under an understanding that there are no rules, and everyone needs to be on their game and look out in all directions. Skill-wise, they're much better than American drivers, because they have to be (although I can't imagine learning to drive in Nepal.) Everyone honks all the time, but it's not a rude gesture; it's simply to let someone know that you're about to turn. Or approaching an intersection and going straight. Or that you're about to pass someone. Or that you can tell you're about to be passed and you're okay with that. Or that you're driving into a large crowd of slow-walking pedestrians, who will be run over if they don't move to the edge of the road because you have no intention of stopping for them. But they do move over, just barely. Or that you're passing a large truck on a blind curve on a mountain road and see a motorcycle coming the opposite direction, straight towards you, to announce that they need to move off of the road, close to the trees and/or cliffs, even though they were just driving straight on their correct side of the highway, because you're there now and you're bigger. We almost never saw anyone get upset about any of this - it's just how it was. Sitting up front in a taxi through the city felt like a video game, with countless distractions and invasions entering the road and barely getting out of the way.
One more example - late in the trip, when we were back in Kathmandu, we were in a taxi or van or something and our driver was about to make a right turn (the more difficult turn, remember) through a surprisingly busy intersection - it must have been a major hub, because it had multiple lanes of traffic on all sides and policemen directing some of it in the middle. I think that was the only time we saw either of those things. Anyway, our driver wanted to go right, across the traffic flow, and there really isn't space, so...he just started driving, through a non-existent hole in the vehicles (people slowed down or moved slightly out of the way when it was evident that he was coming through), and then continued to drive on the wrong side of the road entirely, directly into two lanes of oncoming traffic, at a fairly slow pace. The cars split around us, and he continued on this side, unphased, for a surprisingly long time, until there was an opportunity to move back to the correct side. So I did learn one Nepali driving rule - you can drive in any direction you want on any road, as long as you move slowly and honk your horn as you do it.
All that to say, the drive to Tansen was over 10 hours of this, mostly puttering along at 20-30 kilometers an hour around very winding, hilly "highways", up against cliffs with very little in the way of guardrails (and sometimes none.) Of course, this didn't stop our driver from passing on nearly every blind curve we came across, but all the other drivers seemed to expect that, so it worked out. One thing I will say about the drive was that everyone on the team did a great job of staying positive - no one complained or got cranky, or cursed Shailesh for taking us on this cramped and perilous journey. Everyone stayed in high spirits, tired but eager to see the Nepali countryside and enjoying our conversations, getting to know each other better.
At one point we saw a fairly large monkey walking alongside the road, during a pit stop. It was definitely a distinct reminder that we weren't in America...
When we finally arrived in Tansen, which is in the region of Palpa, we were spent. Shailesh had been saying "2 more hours" for a good 4 or 5 hours at that point, so we were relieved to suspend our disbelief and actually accept that the car ride did, in fact, have an end. Robert & Debbie checked into their hotel room, and I checked into mine, and originally the others were going to be driven around to their host families, but it was late, and everyone was exhausted, so they just got 4 extra rooms for a night. We all ate dinner (Dal Bhat, of course,) and got some much-needed sleep.
Driving in Nepal is fascinating, and quite insane. They drive on the left, mostly, but that's more of a guideline than a hard rule. In fact, there didn't seem to be any real traffic rules, other than the fact that the bigger guy has the right-of-way, simply because he can. I didn't see any speed limits, road signs, etc. People didn't drive all that fast, but they were always passing on both sides, edging other drivers and pedestrians off the road, driving straight into large crowds of people and vehicles, etc.
There's a wide range of activity on the narrow, trash-filled streets of Kathmandu. There are people walking all around, of course, as many of them don't own any type of car and there is a lot of market activity in the street. There are also bicyclists, and bikes with giant bundles of stuff attached to them (I saw one guy on a bike dragging a huge cart of lumber and building supplies.) There are rickshaws all over the place, slowly and unevenly weaving through traffic. There are a ton of dirt bikes, mopeds, and motorcycles; the skinny roads seemed to be made for these, as they weave in and out of everything else, even driving down very narrow alleys that have barely enough room for two people to walk. Many of the houses and stores had little concrete ramps down the middle of their front steps for bikes. We even saw a family of four crammed onto one moped.
There are also open-backed micro buses, many taxis, larger delivery trucks, etc., all trying to get through the same tiny, hilly streets. As I mentioned before, the streets there don't have names - everything is done by landmarks and helpful passersby; even some of our taxi drivers got us to our destination by repeatedly slowing to the side of the road to ask random people where the place was.
The driving style seems reckless and aggressive when looked at through American eyes, but it's really not. Their traffic just operates under an understanding that there are no rules, and everyone needs to be on their game and look out in all directions. Skill-wise, they're much better than American drivers, because they have to be (although I can't imagine learning to drive in Nepal.) Everyone honks all the time, but it's not a rude gesture; it's simply to let someone know that you're about to turn. Or approaching an intersection and going straight. Or that you're about to pass someone. Or that you can tell you're about to be passed and you're okay with that. Or that you're driving into a large crowd of slow-walking pedestrians, who will be run over if they don't move to the edge of the road because you have no intention of stopping for them. But they do move over, just barely. Or that you're passing a large truck on a blind curve on a mountain road and see a motorcycle coming the opposite direction, straight towards you, to announce that they need to move off of the road, close to the trees and/or cliffs, even though they were just driving straight on their correct side of the highway, because you're there now and you're bigger. We almost never saw anyone get upset about any of this - it's just how it was. Sitting up front in a taxi through the city felt like a video game, with countless distractions and invasions entering the road and barely getting out of the way.
One more example - late in the trip, when we were back in Kathmandu, we were in a taxi or van or something and our driver was about to make a right turn (the more difficult turn, remember) through a surprisingly busy intersection - it must have been a major hub, because it had multiple lanes of traffic on all sides and policemen directing some of it in the middle. I think that was the only time we saw either of those things. Anyway, our driver wanted to go right, across the traffic flow, and there really isn't space, so...he just started driving, through a non-existent hole in the vehicles (people slowed down or moved slightly out of the way when it was evident that he was coming through), and then continued to drive on the wrong side of the road entirely, directly into two lanes of oncoming traffic, at a fairly slow pace. The cars split around us, and he continued on this side, unphased, for a surprisingly long time, until there was an opportunity to move back to the correct side. So I did learn one Nepali driving rule - you can drive in any direction you want on any road, as long as you move slowly and honk your horn as you do it.
All that to say, the drive to Tansen was over 10 hours of this, mostly puttering along at 20-30 kilometers an hour around very winding, hilly "highways", up against cliffs with very little in the way of guardrails (and sometimes none.) Of course, this didn't stop our driver from passing on nearly every blind curve we came across, but all the other drivers seemed to expect that, so it worked out. One thing I will say about the drive was that everyone on the team did a great job of staying positive - no one complained or got cranky, or cursed Shailesh for taking us on this cramped and perilous journey. Everyone stayed in high spirits, tired but eager to see the Nepali countryside and enjoying our conversations, getting to know each other better.
At one point we saw a fairly large monkey walking alongside the road, during a pit stop. It was definitely a distinct reminder that we weren't in America...
When we finally arrived in Tansen, which is in the region of Palpa, we were spent. Shailesh had been saying "2 more hours" for a good 4 or 5 hours at that point, so we were relieved to suspend our disbelief and actually accept that the car ride did, in fact, have an end. Robert & Debbie checked into their hotel room, and I checked into mine, and originally the others were going to be driven around to their host families, but it was late, and everyone was exhausted, so they just got 4 extra rooms for a night. We all ate dinner (Dal Bhat, of course,) and got some much-needed sleep.
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