You don't know the meaning of a bumpy road until you have taken a bus from Kathmandu to Pokhara, along the side of a Rocky Mountain, with a sheer drop on one side. This journey was like a bouncy castle on wheels, and whenever there was a particularly large bump in the road, you were catapulted out of your seat and momentarily suspended in mid-air. This ride was 8 hours of whip lash in the making.
Having said that, this was a really interesting journey through the landscapes of Nepal. Starting out in the city, we saw it go from a gradual gradient of shops and restaurants to shanty towns in the surrounding area of Kathmandu, with big tin roofs weighed down by heavy stones to stop them from flying away. Further out of the city we began to see more remote settlements, with little pockets of civilisation in between vast spaces of wilderness.
Then, as we headed further and further up we began to see people harvesting crops which grew on steep slanted angles along the side of the mountain. Children were washing their hands in the edge of the river far below, alongside monkeys who bathed in the middle of the fast flowing water.
When we got to pokhara itself, there was a mad rush of taxi drivers asking to take you where you want to go before you'd even got off the coach. Upon arriving at our hostel, we threw down our bags, turned on the fan and made friends with the two little geckos who live in our bathroom.
