CATCHING A RIDE

5th April 2015

As a child I apparently climbed everything, mum would often find me precariously balanced on a cupboard or up a pair of curtains. Once she found me getting my adrenaline kick by climbing the fence overlooking a sheer bank to the train tracks at the bottom of our garden. 

Through my teens this need for a bit of rush continued on in the form of skating from the age of ten to my early twenties. This then evolved into surfing whilst spending some years down in Cornwall. 

As you may have read, I recently switched sports again to the deadly sport of Road Crossing in Kathmandu, but now I can inform you I have a new passion. As petrifying as it is exhilarating, and more dangerous than all my previous sports put together, catching a ride on a Nepalese local bus is my new fix.

We have rode a few tourist buses, these are still pretty terrifying, but the seats are too well attached, the suspension and shock absorbers are too well kept and some even have seat belts. If you want a real rush, catch a local bus, sit right at the back (experience has shown that's where you get the most air) and hold on for dear life.

Before we had gone five minutes from the bus station, a taxi crashed into the back of us in the turmoil of Kathmandu's main high way. I consider this bonus points. When we snaked up the steep Kathmandu valley headed for Chitwan in the south, a massive storm had blown in with lightning, strong winds and rain, making conditions perfect.  

At breakneck speeds we shot round the twisting narrow mountain roads, I think the correct side to drive is the left, but our guy was a professional and spent a long time cruising on the right. At times we would overtake strings of lorries and other busses whilst headed straight for blind corners with unfriendly drops and little in the way of barriers. Most were missing from where other vehicles had taken the sport to new extremes and driven off the edge. (We saw the remains of a few) In one perfectly executed manoeuvre I counted two massive lorries and a tourist coach. 

One of the most exhilarating parts of the sport is the air time. This scores a lot of points at competition. Our driver didn't seem to know what breaks were (breaking loses a lot of points at competition anyway) and hurtled over massive sections of road that were not fit for walking let alone driving. The resulting effect threw me and H to the roof. No joke, not one bit of us was touching the bus! If you have seen Anchor Man 2 you will have a rough idea.

Towards the final third of the ride, night fell. At first I thought this would add an extra buzz, but you couldn't see the crazy manoeuvres which actually tamed the ride a little. However you did have no warning for when you were going to get some air time. 

We shakily rolled into a town which name escapes me round 8ish, after a seven hour action packed journey. It was text book bus riding, almost scoring a perfect 10. Luckily for us we have to catch two from here to Chitwan tomorrow. Maybe by the end of our time in Nepal we will be good enough to enter the NBL (Nepalese Bus-riding League)