Best Seat in the House

According to the Lonely Planet Guide to Nepal:

“Bus travel in Nepal poses a significant risk of accident. It's uncommon to drive for more than an hour on any stretch of road without passing the burnt-out shell of a public bus crushed like tin foil into the canyon below. Travelling on an overnight bus trip is probably the most dangerous thing you can do in Nepal, and is certainly a bigger risk than that currently posed by the Maoists and even more dangerous than the bungee jump (only kidding on that one). You are more than 30 times more likely to die in a road accident in Nepal than in most developed countries.
During the course of researching this guide we passed ten fatal bus crashes in one ten-day period, which between them killed over 200 people. Tourist buses are generally safer than public buses but still the message is clear; keep bus travel to a minimum.”

They sounded great! With no trains in Nepal, the only alternative was to fly into Kathmandu, but that would mean gaining 1000m in altitude in a couple of hours, and besides that we wanted to go to Pokhara first. So we took our chances with the buses of death.

Having been promised a tourist bus by the agent in our hotel we booked with, we boarded the bus early the next morning to be greeted by nothing but Nepalese on board. We were directed to the tourist section, which basically meant sitting in the driver's cab area, which was separated from the passengers in the back with a plywood wall and a small door. I got to sit right up front, so I had an unobstructed view of the roads ahead.

The journey had barely begun when a traffic policeman halted it. The main road was closed. After much shouting and gesticulating, the bus driver reluctantly tried to find a detour. Down one unpaved street, we came screeching to a halt. There was a chasm in the road, which was hard to spot in the pre-dawn darkness. The driver's helper got out and inspected it. Too wide. No shit, it was about a metre gap! The batteries in my camera were dead so I was unable to get any photos unfortunately.

A detour from the detour meant we ended up driving through what seemed like one huge quarry for about 10km. I've never gone quadbiking, but I'd imagine a course is similar to what we drove through.

Like the local buses in India, we stopped to pick up and drop off passengers all along the way. The closer we got to Pokhara the busier the bus got. For the last four hours of the journey I was sitting at the windshield, along with a Nepalese lady, her son (neither of whom spoke a word of English), the gearstick (who didn't speak at all) and the driver (who shouted a lot), all cosily squeezed together. This was the best seat in the house to witness the no holding back overtaking around blind corners with a 500 foot unbarriered drop beside the road lunacy of our heroic driver. We got there in the end.