29 th

At 8 o`clock in the morning we left to meet Karma's wife, sister and young daughter, who's only 11 days old. Together with Gen Tsering-la we had breakfast and planned our trip and our transport.

Because a trip by car is quite expensive, we decided to do the 84km trip by bus and the last 2km we would walk. At 10 o` clock we left by taxi. That is: Karma, his friendly mother, my father and me. We drove to the other side of town, which took us one hour. We arrived at a very busy road with traffic jams, people redoing the road and plenty of busses and taxi`s. It was also raining again. Luckily we were offered a ride on a tourist bus, which had missed his clients. So we ended up having quite a luxurious ride for a good price! During the trip we stopped for lunch in a small road restaurant. After 70 km we changed to a local bus.

This bus was very crowded with friendly local people. The 12km drive took us 1 hour. While driving, we noticed a similar bus who got off the road and was lying there up side down. Finally, high up on the mountain surrounded by a green scenery, we finally arrived at our destination, 82km from Kathmandu. Or at least that was what we thought....

We had a very nice cup of tea in an authentic bar and then to our big surprise we had to continue our trip. We needed to climb down to the river following a small slippery stream of water.

Totally soaked, with our luggage on our back, we crossed the river on a jungle bridge. After a short break, we had to climb for quite a while on a path where leaches were waiting to attack our juicy legs.

So already a bit tired, we pulled up our socks and started the climb.

And what a climb it was! To my surprise,Karma's 55 year old mother looked like she was taking a relaxing walk in the park. So I pulled my strenght together and followed her example. Finally, after more than 2 hours we arrived at the village Rathankot.

We received another heart warming welcome and enjoyed a nice meal after putting on some dry clothes. In the evening Karma showed us to our beds. After installing our mosquito nets (there was no possibility to close our open window) we enjoyed a well deserved sleep.