Setting off for the trek

Having left our heaviest things in the hotel in Kathmandu we were ready to set off for Pokhara (from where we would start the trek).  Raj (the owner of the trekking company we had booked with) met us in our hotel at 8am to see us off.  We had the same driver who had picked us up at the airport for the journey and also with us was Dev, our guide for the trip.  It turns out that getting to Pokhara involves a 5-6hr drive along some pretty treacherous mountain roads.  The driving style in Nepal is not dissimilar to that in India.  Road markings are irrelevent, horn use is frequent and has meanings ranging from "get out of the way" to "I'm overtaking round a blind corner and am on the wrong side of the road".  Despite this (and the large number of crashed vehicles abandoned in the middle of the road) the drive turned out to be pretty uneventful for the first 3 hrs - although Dev did manage to get a tape eaten buy the dodgy tape recorder in the car.  Then we came to a total stop.  For about the first two hours we didn't know what was going on.  We had wormed our way to the front of the queue of traffic but both our driver and guide kept disappearing.  It turned out there had been an accident in the village ahead the previous day and a local had been killed.  Now they were arguing over compensation and had blocked the roads to put pressure on the negotiations.  We sat in the car for about 4hrs before the roads were cleared, trying to keep a low profile, scared that the situation would deteriorate into violence.  At one point things looked pretty nasty as a group of youths carrying sticks and pieces of metal chased some people out of the village.  Thankfully though that was the worst thing to happen and we eventaully managed to get to Pokhara around 6pm.  After such a long drive we were knackered so all plans of exploring our new surroundings were abandoned in favour of sleep.