Take a Xanax, Martha

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Roadblock in Eastern Nepal, originally uploaded by Subcontinental Drift.

You all may have heard about the turmoil in Nepal — Maoists, strikes, and the like. Well, so had we. That’s why we quizzed everyone we could before heading into the mountainous little country. Everyone told us that it would be fine and, ultimately, it was.

One little problem: A series of strikes turned a sixteen-hour bus ride into a fifty-five-hour ordeal.

We entered at the Eastern border, near Darjeeling, and got on a bus at five in the morning. Everything was going swimmingly until we were stopped by the above-pictured tires. They are smoldering here, but when we arrived they were aflame (quite dramatic, really).

So there we were, the only westerners among hundreds of Nepalis in the baking sun. At first we were apprehensive, but we soon realized that it was more of a large-scale picnic than anything resembling unrest. The roadblock was not directly related to the “Maoist Insurgency” (which the US State Department foolishly calls a terrorist group) but stemmed from a conflict between the town and Nepal’s long-haul truckers. Apparently, a truck had killed a motorcyclist, and the town wanted compensation. And, of course, what do you do when you have a grievance in Nepal? You block the road — check that, the ONLY road — thereby leaving hundreds, including geriatrics and infants, to bake in the sun of Nepal’s plains.

But that day we were only stranded for about 8 hours — a mighty cheer arose as everyone raced back to the buses as the roadblock was lifted (read: the tires burned out). The next day was not to be so brief.

After weathering a brief roadblock around midnight, our caravan was on its way to Kathmandu when we encountered another roadblock around 4 AM. The reason for this roadblock, as far as we could tell, was from a similar (maybe even the same) incident. A truck killed a motorcyclist. Only in this version of the story, the townspeople dragged the truck driver from his truck, jailed him, and then murdered him. Due process, Nepali style.

This time, it was the truck drivers who wanted “compensation.” Large “goods carriers” blocked the road, creating what turned out to be an astonishingly large backlog of transport vehicles. In an informal count (we had plenty of time) there were 85 passenger buses, and we didn’t even get to the end of the line. Conservatively, one may assume 20 people per bus. So, one may safely say that there were 2,000 people stranded in the sun all day. Yes, we were there from 4 AM until midnight. Smelly, sweaty drudgery.

The rest of the journey went fine. There was another short roadblock for a few hours in the early morning, but this was like a punch in the face after a bullet to the gut. Easy.

We arrived in Kathmandu at noon, fifty-five hours after we left. Welcome to Nepal.

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