Some of my worst travel problems have ended up my best and most memorable experiences. Negotiating with taxi drivers, tuk-tuks, railway way ticketing offices in half English with lots finger pointing and arm waving. Half the time not knowing if we were even on the right bus or going the right way.
I am lucky enough to be pretty well travelled. Though I am not sure it is really luck, I had to work bloody hard, plan, organise, save. I have done lots of different trips and I used to like trying experiencing all the different modes of transport. Probably the hardest was when we travelled overland between Nepal and India. From memory we caught the local bus from Pokhara in the west of Nepal heading to Varanasi in the north of India. We got half way on these very narrow mountain roads with chickens and urine sloshing all over the floor as the bus rocking side to side. It was only then I understood why riding on the roof was a popular option for the locals and a few game tourists.
Our bus got half way before coming to unpassable land slide. Everyone just got out and we were standing around for hours. The driver and locals did not speak any English and we were not sure what was to happens from here? Wait for a bull dozer to arrive and fix the road. Turn back? With no internet or mobile phone, we had no idea where we were. Eventually another bus pulled up on the other side of the land slide and some people started to walk to it. The driver spoke to us and pointed at it. It took a few seconds but then it clicked in my head. It was just a simple straight swap. The buses found some where to turn around and we were on our way again. I was worried that they would try and make us pay again but there was no problems and we eventually arrived at a small boarder post where we started our Indian experience. All this was totally foreign to me at the time but the locals knew exactly what was going on and what needed to be done.
