Culture Shocks: A ten-hour traffic jam in Nepal

We realised there might be a bit of a problem when our bus driver went to have a nap in the aisle.
The day had started well; myself and my girlfriend at the time had caught the early bus from Kathmandu to Chitwan, and we had managed to survive the morning, despite the bus driver’s penchant for overtaking on notoriously dangerous mountain passes.

The views were absolutely stunning, so it was with relief that the bus ground to a halt 3000m above an emerald valley that stretched into the haze of the midday heat: ‘fantastic’, my naïve seventeen year-old self thought, ‘a chance to get some pictures’.

Unfortunately, we were not alone in stopping; thousands of buses and bikes were at a standstill along the snaking gravel track right into the distance, and the bus driver’s decision to give up and sleep affirmed our prediction that we wouldn’t be moving for a while. After taking the obligatory snaps, there really wasn’t much else to do, as it turns out that mountain passes aren’t particularly exciting places to be for an extended period.

After an hour or so, we checked our supplies, and to our disappointment we only found two packs of Oreos and a big bottle of water. Brutal rationing ensued: three sips of water and an Oreo an hour was the going rate, and for peachy Westerners like us this was a bit of an inconvenience.

We were not alone in stopping; thousands of buses and bikes were at a standstill along the snaking gravel track right into the distance…

We tried everything to overcome the boredom; we read, we moaned, we slept, we bickered, but as time went by we exhausted all our options, and ended up slumped in our chairs in what can be best described as a conscious coma.

One pastime that remained entertaining was staring at another traveller (I think he was German), who had clearly not been dissuaded from removing his motorbike leathers and his Slash-esque top hat during his time in Nepal, despite such trifling hindrances as unbearable humidity or looking ridiculous.

Watching this man and his equally impractically dressed wife get more and more uncomfortable provided a similar sadistic pleasure that I imagine a child gets when magnifying light onto an ants nest, or pouring salt onto a slug.

After ten hours or so, the coach began to move again to the cheers of the passengers. What had caused this hold up? Road works. I’m not even joking. We broke up once we got back to England, and I can’t help but think that spending ten hours in a traffic jam with me probably didn’t help much.