Crossing the river
I’m not quite sure which river was this. Actually I’m not quite sure what village it was either. All I can tell you is that we were in Nepal, on our way to the border with China and we had to make a stop here because the Land Cruiser we were with came out a bit battered from the last two mud slides we had to pass through. The first mud pond was no match for the car and our crazy driver. In fact, even a few other cars made it after us. But when we got to the second mud slide it was complete chaos.
Nobody could quite work out how to get across the deep mud that was covering the road. You see, because it was monsoon season, the locals were used to it and they were quite happy to sit on the side of the road for a few hours while the road would be cleared. Us, on the other hand, had to cross the border by early afternoon so we could make it to the Tibetan Plateau by nightfall. So our driver decided to go for it, making it quite far, but not far enough. He got stuck in knee-deep mud and we all thought that we would be there for an extra day. But he kept trying to get out, revving the engine, moving back and forth, until when, about 30 minutes later, he made it to the other side. After we started driving again, we made great time because for a couple of hours nobody else managed to pass through the mud.
Also, for those of you that are fans on the Facebook page, I posted a shot of our car being stuck in the deep mud. This is part of my effort to post shots that didn’t make it to the blog, but are still relevant to some of the stories that I post here.