Special Tolka day and terrifying bus journey

Day 10 - Tolka-Landruk-Siwai-Birethanti

6am saw us up and beside Dad's chorten. Karna showed me what to do. We placed four bamboo sticks around the chorten then wrapped prayer flags around and surrounding it. Then lit incense and put incense sticks all in and around it. Karna left a rupee coin and a banana on the chorten. Then we stood, quietly, praying and reflecting. It was moving, and special.

We breakfasted quickly and were walking back to Landruk by 7:45. The plan was to follow the others' route to Siwai and then catch a local bus to Birethanti to catch up with them there. But, as it happened, our early start and quickish pace saw us catch them in Landruk at 8:30am, just after they'd left.

The new Tolka bridge

Bharat strides down the flagstones

A short but sharp descent down the now slick wet flagstones brought us to a short bridge over a raging Modi River. Then a pleasant stroll through villages and village life. A youngish dog had followed us from Landruk and happily trotted along with us. We gradually ascended to another bridge, crossed, then seemed to reverse direction to drop down a 4WD track to the Siwai bus stop. There were a steady stream of Tata and Mahindra jeeps on this road, ferrying people to and from Gandruk. Soon we reached Siwai for tea, and worked out who was walking on and who was taking the easy way out and travelling by bus. Initially, the porters and Expansion. And Bharat. And then Barb, and Janette. And me (I'd been promised a bus ride!)... in the end only Tracey, Hai and Angela walked, accompanied by Karna, Sunit and Bachan - see the sidebar.

We had plenty of time to wait for the bus so we amused ourselves by watching baby goats play; playing with our adopted pet dog from Landruk; fawning over an adorable little puppy; and making plans with Bharat for Annapurna Base Camp in 2021.

Anita with puppy

The bus turned up at last. An old, midsize thing quite common here with big wheels and good ground clearance. We piled on, Phillipa and I discovering too late that some seats came with next to no legroom and our knees where rammed into the seat in front. And off we set.

It was petrifying.

The road really was a 4WD track, not a bus route. Like Skippers Canyon but with mud, fresh slips, and lots of jeeps, motorbikes, walkers, dogs, goats and more to contend with.

Our first challenge was a muddy slope which took us five attempts and needed everyone to cram into the back of the bus to hold the wheels down.  From then on it was 90 minutes of bumping, squeezing through gaps, often not being able to see the edge of the road out my window and simply seeing the swiftly flowing river far below us, feeling the back moving around with a life of its own ... I thought I was exaggerating a 'normal' Nepal bus ride until afterwards, even Bharat said it was the craziest ride he'd ever had.

Eventually we could extract ourselves, alive, from the bus and a short stroll brought us up to Birethanti. I didn't think I'd been here before until we arrived at our guest house, The Green View Lodge & Restaurant, and it triggered a rush of memories. We'd had tea here, and Toby had found cats to play with. A really nice town. We had tea (again) then explored the rickety bamboo bridge below, a Himalayan Art Gallery, Souvenir shops, and a partly completed hydroelectric structure that Tim, Bharat and I stared at for ages trying to work out how it worked and what it did.

Want to know more about the Middle Modi Hydroelectric Project?

Of course you do. And Tim has done the research for us. Here are the links he found.

Project website
Nepal Energy Forum's information page
Latest news - local people halt project after damage to houses

The people were fascinating too. The owner of the guest house is looking after his two grandchildren while his son or daughter works in the UK with their partner. The grandkids are UK/Nepal citizens and will go back to the UK when they're 4.

Seems like they will have a pretty good life, to me.

After dinner the locals started singing Raam kicked off with his dancing.  And then we were all clapping and singing along and dancing too. Hai found Nepali music on his iPad and then the strangest thing happened - since we couldn't figure out how to run the iPad through a stereo, we took turns wearing bluetooth headphones and having individual silent disco while everyone else clapped. Even Angela got into it.

And there were huge bugs. Sure, you can have my beer.

This is what we were all dancing to!