Day 13: travelling

For those who follow us by schedule and might be confused after reading the title of this post; we will go to Pokhara at 09-08-2010 (tomorrow). We switched our visit to Chitwan and Pokhara because we heared that this way our trip will be more relaxed, there Chitwan is a perfect last stop in Nepal.

Our trip to Pokhara started early in the morning at 06.30. A friend of Fenna (Rene, a volunteer here, aged 40+) offered us a ride with his jeep to Pokhara (like 5 hours) and well behaved as we are, we took his offer generously. Ofcourse it also saved us a nasty 7 hour bustrip so we were quite lucky.
Rene wanted to leave early, because of the possibility of trafficjams and so we went in the very rainy, dark morning.
The jeep we had was exactly like you know from Afrika, white and prepared for every roadcondition. We really needed that with the heavy rain and the doubtful road close to Kathmandu. After maybe a 1 hour drive from Kathmandu there was a sudden stop of all traffic. I walked to the front of the trafficjam and there I saw a lot of people standing around a little blanket with two little shoes next to it. My bad thoughts came true when I realised that wthere had to be a little child underneauth, dead! I went back to the car to announce the bad news and later on we heared that it was a little boy that got hit by a truck, so our day startet very sad.
While waiting Rene told us what the procedure is when a person gets hit on the road and dies. The guilty driver has to pay 5000 euro to the family and the body is only removed after that money is paid. And since the father of the poor child was in Kathmandu, we had to wait for someone to bring him here, to the accident. That took at least 2 hours so at the time we saw a taxi passing by with approximately the father, the trafficjam was enourmous.
When we continue our way to Pokhara at 11 o’clock there is no more sign of the disaster that took place here this morning. Strange that bad things can come and go this quick. Along the way we listened to the kind of dated music of Rene (of which he knew every lyric) and whe looked for the first white mountain to appear.
At about 15.00 we arrive at the Mountainhouse, our place to stay for next 3 days. The room is very big and new and we can see a tiny peece of the lake from our balcony. We eat at Boomerang, near the beautiful lake, and in the evening we can see the first snowtops of what could be the Annapourna (1 or 2) and the Fishtail mountain.