The Road to Pokhara
The first of 3 stops over a 3.5hr period, which were both a much appreciated respite from the potholed roads and a total waste of time that added at least an hour to the trip - this was just for a ‘break', while the following two were for breakfast and lunch
This turned out to be a long one, apologies in advance. Also, we recommend listening to the Beach Boys whilst watching the embedded video, as it makes it infinitely better. Or at least it did for us for a solid two hours on the ride today.
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So, if anyone was really curious, the 200km bus ride between Kathmandu and Pokhara (ie Nepal's second most populous city and its main tourist destination) is not recommended except for those who:
1) Want to save some money on the flight ($7 instead of $99),
2) Want to virtue signal about their eco creds (despite Yeti Airlines being the first carbon-neutral airline in SE Asia and the video here proving fairly unquestionably that road transport is not eco-friendly), or
3) Are doing a PhD or some kind of fieldwork in anthropology, political corruption, China's Belt-and-Road Initiative or similar.
Some more relevant info in bullet point form:
the road was terrible beyond imagination (and this is coming from a person who's been to some of the least developed countries in the world)
the drivers are equally terrible (we respect a bit of insanity and would actually love to rent a car here and fly around the poorly maintained bits of dirt and rock that masquerade as 'roads', but here they will try to pass when they see another bus or truck coming at them, and then both vehicles have to slam on the brakes and it's a stare down for 5mins while traffic gets even more jammed in both directions), and
when we finally checked into our hotel (some 10hrs after leaving our hotel in Kathmandu), the owner literally went off on a tangent about how corrupt the government is, and told us, no exaggeration, that when we go back to Kathmandu we should find them and punch them in the face. The Nepalese government. We should punch them right in the kisser. How can you not love* that guy?
*One reason would be if your lakeside room not only didn't have a lake view, but the only window was about 10cm away from a brick wall of a newly built hotel, and then when you asked to upgrade, he charged you 3x what the upgrade would have cost you if you'd just done it on Booking.com yesterday. And there's no light in the WC, and there were an ashtray of cigarettes in the room, and there's a very strange lock, and the toilet doesn't really flush. But we don't want to split hairs here. The point is, just pay to fly Yeti Airlines next time....
NB1: This video wasn't shot in black and white and doesn't use any filter. If you take a bus on the road between Nepal's two largest cities you will just assume that it's the dustiest place on Earth, and you wouldn't be wrong. And a couple weeks ago we were camping in the desert in Kuwait near the border with Iraq....
NB2: Back to the actual road in questions here, it's like the government decided to tear up all 200km of pavement between Kathmandu and Pokhara and repair and expand it at the same time, but only hired like 15 people and bought 3 construction vehicles. It's insane. Actually, we take back everything we said above, and strongly encourage everyone to take this bus ride, just to see how crazy it is. No rush though, there's zero chance of this being finished before everyone reading this is long dead....