“Karen!”

“What John?”

“Instead of the 8 hour bus journey back to Kathmandu, what if we break up the journey?”

Karen cocked up her eyebrows and asked..
“Wow. Good idea, but where could we stay?”

“I have heard great things about Bandipur. A little town full of culture and great to visit. The Lonely Planet assures me it’s very accessible”. Said John.

“Great. Sounds like a plan” beamed Karen.

Boy were we…wrong!

What started as a chance to break up a long bus ride became an exercise in patience.

We jumped off our tourist bus at Dumre, on the highway to Kathmandu. There was not a lot of options to get up the hill to Bandipur and before we knew it we were seated in the back of a ‘Taxi’.

Before we would reach Bandipur we would have to go to the market and get some vegetables for 20 mins. What?

Yep. You read that right. Basically our taxi was someone else’s taxi and he was subletting it to us to pay for the journey.

We promptly got out and after a while of being pestered and haggled we managed to secure our own ‘taxi’. This ‘taxi’ looked like an entry in a Tokyo Street Race and the incense burning from the potato placeholder in front was slowly knocking us out as we climbed to Bandipur. Luckily he dropped us outside the town in short order.

We walked into the town of Bandipur like a scene out of those old Spaghetti Westerns…. People stopped what they were doing and looked at us. Dogs stopped fighting in the street. Window shutters were slammed shut. All that was missing was a Sergio Leone score to play in the background. As we walked down the main (only) street every so often we heard window shutters creak open as we passed by. All that was missing was the tumbleweed and church bell ringing.

We spent an hour looking for lodgings. Karen would duck in each time and check the room. Eventually we decided on a room at an old converted house and began the Bandipur Heritage Trail to keep us occupied for that day.

And 1 hour later we were finished. It was still only lunchtime. Maybe we could head back down to the hill? No dice, the local bus would not leave again until the morning. We were stranded at 1,050m above sea level in the Himalayan hills.

Another couple in the village seemed to be forlorn at their situation and the feeling of ‘being stranded’ was etched on their faces, as they sulked and fell out with each other. Luckily Karen and I are champions when it comes to struggling with diversity, so we spent the next few hours pottering and laughing off our misfortune and at that other couple.

We met a friendly girl who chatted to us in English and French and offered to show us the sights of the town. But this was merely a vehicle for her to entice us to buy her family food or give her money. We declined and later as Karen was feeling guilty we saw that we were not her only clients as she worked her charms on some French and Japanese tourists.

During our earlier attempts at finding accomodation the best looking hotel brazenly told us the room rate was $100 for the night. Impressed by this show of bravado we went back there for dinner in the restaurant . Karen ordered a Veg Green Curry and I ordered some chicken. Five minutes after ordering one of the chefs ducked out into the street and not long after walked back through the restaurant with a live chicken under its arm. Guess who that was for?

The next morning we were woken to the sounds of dogs scrapping and people milling about. After some breakfast we were put on the local bus back to Dumre, from where we got a place on a Tourist Bus for one of the longest journeys ever back to Katmandu. This magnificent journey was punctuated by a lunch stop at a genuine third world road house. Karen and I munched our crisps outside on the wall for fear of picking up something from the building itself.

After that it was back on the bus to tackle the hills outside Kathmandu. Before long we were back in Mums Home Hotel for our last few days.