Journeys Beyond the Front Door by James Hastings

Author:James Hastings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure, travel, journal, diary, non fiction, nepal, bangladesh
Publisher: James Hastings

Chapter Eleven: The Trans-dimensional Vertical Highway

We had decided that tonight should be an early night so that we could regain our dwindling strength. We were, after all, going to be hurtling down the mountains in a bus the following morning towards the Chitwan Valley – an eight hour drive away to the south west. Whilst once again stuffing our belongings back into their bags we heard from Sonam and Samesh, our friends from the Isis Bar and they informed us that I had left behind a camera case when we had last been at the restaurant, that fateful drunk night of the Purple Haze debacle. Both the she-beast and I found this tip-off quite amusing as it was easily the most sober part of the evening, but in retrospect of how that ghastly night ended, we were not surprised to hear that our belongings were still emerging out of the woodwork from across Thamel. It did not explicitly require too much convincing before we were once more venturing back down the winding streets with a plan to consume some farewell cocktails and deep fried cheese sticks in a pretext of re-acquainting ourselves with more lost property. We spent the night conversing in butchered Nepalese to our gracious hosts and in between the learning of helpful catch phrase we remembered that in our bag we still had quite a handful of koala keyrings left over from the days outing and enquired if their younger siblings would care for more. It was here at our surprise that the staff had organized gifts of their own and presented us with sets of prayer beads and necklaces of the Buddha. We were humbled and taken aback from this unexpected show of affections and as we prepared ourselves to leave we proceeded to hug and embrace each other in a unity of cultures through the spiritual awakening via inebriation. Shuffling back to the hotel at 1 AM in an highly intoxicated state we stuffed the last of our belongings back in their bags and fell into a prolonged nap before having to awake blurry eyed and bushy tailed at 5:30 AM to begin the new days adventure.

By 6:30 AM there was no sign of our pick up. We had been told our bus down the mountains would be leaving around 7 AM from the city center terminal and my past anxieties began to kick in that I had indeed been the victim of some elaborate elephant park gypsy scam. With the help of the friendly yet bewildered staff at the front desk, they were able to use the magic of telephones to confirm that the hotel we assumed we had booked did in fact exist and we were definitely expected. Armed with this somewhat comforting knowledge, the hotel staff, in their most pleasant and accommodating ways, organised their own driver and we were rushed to the bus depot where our mechanical steel death trap awaited. Thankfully, we were not late and were able to seize

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