3 White Sisters on the Bus from Hell. It was only ten dollars...so I guess we shouldn't complain.

Yvonne and Elizabeth cleaning rice for the funeral.
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We left Darjeeling on Sept. 17th, via a shared Jeep. Once again, the twisty roads and limited visibility from the monsoon rains wreaked havoc on my inner ear balance. This time however, I was pretty doped up on Dramamine, which offered a bit of relief. About four hours later we found ourselves on the hot, humid plains in a glorified bus stop town just across the border in Nepal: Kakarabhita. We were tired from the journey, and knew we had an even longer journey ahead of us: a 15+hour drive from Kakarbhita to Kathmandu. We originally wanted to break the journey up into several days, that way we could see the countryside during the daytime and take the long night bus (which is notoriously dangerous because of the Maoist activity in the plains region). We decided however, to go straight through on the somewhat safer day bus, after a night of sleep in bus stopville/ mudhole Kakarabhita. We asked to see the bus we would be taking in the morning so we wouldn't get jipped on a fake ticket. The "travel agent" showed us a decent bus that didn't look like it would fall apart, so we agreed, bartered a bit, and got him to give us a discount (thank you big bags of medical supplies!). We went to bed right away because we had to get up at 3:00am for our bus ride.

The ever crowded buses of nepal- the bus ride from Kakaravita to KTM!!
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Early in the morning, still dark and humid from the rain, we were escorted by our hotel manager to the bus.... Surprise, surprise, it's not the bus they showed us. We pretty much expected it, but we let them know that we weren't stupid, and this was definitely not the bus we were promised. It's dark, so we don't know the condition of the new bus, but at this point, we really don't have much choice. We were also told that a bus left at 4:00am, 4:30, and 5:00am. We chose the 4:00am.

Surprise, surprise, it's not the bus they showed us the night before.

Me pounding rice into flour to make sel roti later. (Sel roti is a type of fry bread made for funerals and weddings.)
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Fast forward to us being escorted to yet another bus, and at about 5:30 am, we are finally on our way. We are the only foreigners the entire day. Our bus ticket says "3 white sisters" (in Nepali) instead of our names. We settle in on old seats in a rickety old bus for a long day ahead. The bus stops numerous times- once to be escorted by a police car. The only reason we can think that was for is because there has been a bit of Maoist activity and turmoil in the government lately.

We arrived safe, sound, and exhausted into good ole KTM at about 7:00pm. We grabbed an itty bitty taxi and shoved all of our bags in, and went to a hotel in Thamel for the night. We passed out, exhausted from the last two days journey.