An early start saw the team and all the trekking kit loaded into a colourful bus for a 7am departure for Arughat, it took a while to get out of Kathmandu and a cheeky bribe. Ben was mesmerised how the landscape changed from a bustling and congested sprawling city to the rural landscape of Nepal with its terraced rice fields. The group endured witnessing a live goat getting beheaded in the street and a cow taking a nap in the middle of the street. After driving west for 4 hrs the driver and porters stopped for an hour lunch break, 2hrs later we departed in a much smaller but mobile bus. During lunch there was some great entertainment provided by two cockerels fighting and a pair of dogs procreating.
The group telling the driver how to get out of the rut (c) Rob Smith
Several hours of bone jarring tracks then ensued with the group having to lighten the load by walking as the bus bottomed out in the deep ruts. In Jon’s eagerness to get us Arughat he jumped out the bus to push it out of a rut, unfortunately for him his flip flops could not take the heat and broke to cries of ‘Flip flop down’. During one walking stint old Chris, Ben, Brad & Jim went for a bit of off routing, with old Chris’s North Face approach shoes being out performed by Brads Havanna flip flops. The route to Arughat is in fairly bad condition with the monsoon still upon us the route has turned into a rutted quagmire which snakes its way around the side on mountains and through little tea shacks.
Tropical type terrain on route to Arughat (c) Chris Allewell
We arrived in a misty Arughat as the sun was setting all feeling fairly sorry for ourselves after been battered around a bus for the best part of 11 hrs. Tonight we have the treat of our first Dhal Bhat of the expedition the staple meal for these parts. Tomorrow we depart for our first trekking day to Sati Khola which is about 10Km following the Budhi Gandaki Nadi River and should take us approximately 6hrs with all the up and downs as we traverse the foothills.
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