Bus Trips.

"You're My funny Bunny, I'm your little cupcake "
I can hear Lukey singing to himself quietly as he bashes his ball around the hotel room. The last glimmers of Bollywood music ringing around his head from our bus journey 2 days ago. The only thing that has changed on busses in Asia since I was last here 10 years ago is that flat screens have been installed in the front of some busses. The deafening screeching of Bollywood singers is now accompanied by  actors dressed in lollypop colours and actresses  wearing relatively coversome bikinis and very, very, very long hair all dry humping like exited puppies but never ever actually kissing in deference to Nepali cultural values.

All bus journeys are different.  This was out eighth and final bus trip in Nepal.  We have got the hang of the factors that we can influence. We feed the children minimally before embarking and request "plastic" ( small plastic bags supplied for you to spew into if required) as soon as we get on the bus.  Boyd climbs up on the roof and secures the bags on top. We by tickets for 3 seats, hop on the bus early and bag the seats  one behind two others then defend them determinedly as more and more folk get on the bus children are expected to sit on their parents knee.  On one particularly memorable journey we only bought 2 tickets s for a micro bus ( minivan) and ended sitting  the whole family on one and a half seats for 7 hours.

There is a phenomenon  in reptiles where they become limp and docile when pressure is applied to their eyes and in chickens if you cover their heads then they immediately fall asleep. Well it seems that the same process occurs to small children when squashed into a minivan ( the van had 20 seats and there were 35 people inside) . Aside from vomiting over everything ( we hadn't asked for "plastic")  in the first 5 minutes they both promptly fell asleep and then on awakening just stared docilely our of the widow until our arrival .

But then there are he factors that we cannot influence. If you sit on one side of the bus you get to stare glumly at the 800m drops inches from the wheels of the bus as it squeezes past a truck on the single lane track. And if you sit on the other then you can watch the near misses as the driver overtakes on blind corners.

The morning before our last trip I happened to read the headlines of the Paper ;   
"4 electrocuted in fatal bus crash with power lines. "
Boyds saftey tip as we got on the bus that morning was :
" Never  attempt to disembark from  a bus when it is in contact with high tension power lines" .

Traveling on Nepal's roads are never dull!