Dead on the Mountain — My Wildest Travel Story
Taking the mountain bus through the Himalaya
Nobody talked.
It had been this way for a couple of hours. Occasionally a murmur or nervous laugh, some couple trying to keep their spirits up.
Pointless.
It is impossible to know what we were all thinking, yet at the same time, it would be hard to imagine anyone’s mind anywhere else. The armrests were under constant pressure from thirty sets of shivering white knuckles. I almost felt sorry for them.
The constant bouncing wore on my nerves. Bouncing is a poor word choice. Thrusting skyward and slamming back to the ground with sideways motion thrown in for good measure. That is more appropriate but bouncing is simpler to write. Bounce!
I looked at times to the faces around me and saw the same deadpan look I assumed was on mine. All I could do was imagine how I could react should we run into trouble.
Unfortunately, any trouble would be trouble you can’t really react to. You see, a bus of people rolling off of a cliff edge simply doesn’t care about your reaction.
It just rolls to the bottom. Maybe flips a time or two. Bounce!
With a top-heavy vehicle like this, you forget to look at the scenery. You try to guess which direction you’ll tip.
Maybe you hit too many potholes in a row or try to pass another bus on this single lane. If so, a tip to the left occurs. A tip to the crevasse bottom where the roiling river meets you, hundreds of feet down.
Option number two, we simply tip to the right. Into the sheer cliff face or flat on our sides.
I prayed my brains out for number two simply to be done with it all.
Why was I even here? Shake bounce!
My two friends and I had toyed with the idea of visiting Nepal after reading an article online. That is all the excuse we needed. The premise was that the locals were continuing to build more and more roads through the Himalayas to make it more accessible for tourism.
In particular, the Annapurna Circuit was slated to have new roads that would shorten the seventeen-day trek to less than a week. For self-proclaimed purists like ourselves, this simply would not do. We would have to experience it before it was “ruined”.
We dreamed of it during a frigid, snowless, useless winter. Pleasant spring put it to the recesses of our minds, and shitty summer jobs brought it right back to the forefront. By the time the leaves were changing, I was changing addresses for traveling.
Getting here was no simple task, from the exercising, research, and procurement of equipment, visas, shots, and meds. Then there was Kathmandu and the culture shock.
Finally the inch by inch trudge to the highest elevation of my life…well there was no cake and I thought I might pass out. The Thorong La Pass did not disappoint but doing it in real life is different than the REI classroom presentation. We believed our trek downhill would be simple. We could take a bus. Bounce!
What does it feel like when you realize for the first time, that Death is a not-so-distant character?
I found I came to grips with its presence quite quickly. This bus ride was too cheap for a guaranteed cliff dive, nothing that exciting for tourists was this cheap. I had only to put my faith in those around me. No way was the driver getting paid enough to take one for the team. Or maybe that’s why he didn’t care about throwing this dusty rig around every, single, FUCKING corner. BOUNCE!
Any wandering thoughts of survival were soon dashed. We were suspended in the air. Had we all breathed in unison? Were we high? The right wheels had come off the ground and we were balancing, the luggage-loaded top pulling us towards the edge.
Broken glass exploding around me came to life in my head. Would the bus explode? Would this hurt? Should I even think it…would the wheels on the bus go down to the ground, down to the ground…
We slammed back down so hard that we nearly tipped the other way. Without a pause, the driver took a sharp, blind corner way too fast.
No big deal.
I will time and time again, recommend to you an adventure in Nepal.
Just don’t take the mountain bus.
I wanted to showcase this story from Kim Baker published in the publication Taking Off. Kim and I both started our journey at similar times, crossing the threshold into becoming pro-Medium writers and this topic is close to my heart so give it a read!
Of course, also thank you to KL Simmons & Warren Patterson for accepting me into their publications and putting forth this month’s writing challenge.
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Story and photos ©Ian Hanson. All rights reserved.
