9/8/98: We were the only two people on the cross-country bus from Pokhara back to Kathmandu… Even more interesting the bus had no windshield(!) having shattered the day before… I tried to look at it as if we were driving in a convertible with the top down… A couple of hours down the road traffic came to a stop because of a landslide blocking the road… People were sleeping in the shade underneath vehicles, cooking meals on makeshift grills, and even hanging their laundry out to dry. One bus had a tethered goat wandering about on its roof… Our “private” bus made it as far as the Lakeside Retreat Resort, which we were scheduled to stop at for breakfast… Coincidentally the owner of the bus company was staying there for a meeting with a consortium of other business men… Chagrinned by the windshield-less bus and the delay in travel, he invited Ruth and I to join he and his business partners for a delicious and luxurious lunch, and then obtained permission from the hotel owner for us to use the swimming pool while we waited for the roads to be cleared… Traffic got moving again by early evening, and we made it back to Kathmandu by 9:30pm…
NOTE: The photo above is our view out the pane-less bus as we came upon dozens of other busses, trucks and cars stopped by a landslide.
