Best Driving Ever

If the water doesn't kill us the drivers sure will. Thankfully our first experience was later at night so there were not that many people on the road but yesterday's experience was terrifying. As I mentioned before Utah drivers are nothing compared to Nepal.

All the taxis are small little white cars. They are a mix between a mini, bug, and civic. The dashboards are full of little images representing the God of their choice. Sunday night as we left the airport we had purchased a prepaid taxi. One thing that's different here than in America is that you don't tip your taxi drivers, nor do you get into the taxi without knowing the price. So we loaded all our stuff into our prepaid taxi and off we went. As we turned the corner out of the airport our driver got into the lane with oncoming traffic. He honked his horn a few times and continued to proceed in that lane until he had gained enough headway and then moved back into his lane. This continues to happen thought our entire trip. We would have cars from the other lane do that as well and would be coming directly towards us. Everyone just does what they want on the road and others either move out of the way or you do. There are tons of motorcycles which come and go as they please. They ride I between traffic and honk as much as the cars do. Monday as we go into a bus which is a white large van the driving was just as scary we were now just in a bigger vehicle. With the busses there are two key players. You have the driver and then you have the runner. The driver does his part to not kill us and also get us through the crowded streets, avoiding the occasional cow sitting in the middle of the road. The runner as I call him is a young kid who stands in the open door of the van and calls out where we are going. He calls out as we approach each group gathering and if someone needs to get on he hits the side of the van which informs the driver to stop. The boy than gets out helps the people on (pushing and shoving them in) and then as the driver starts to head off the boy runs and jumps in once again calling out where we are headed. This boy is also the collector of money. He makes sure that everyone pays before they get off. I wasn't sure if this was a set price or not. It was very confusing with all the money he was taking.
On the buses you can never have to many people. The bus may be full but that runner he is always looking for more people. He wants them to get on his bus and not someone else's bus. The more he has in his bus the more money he will get. So yesterday as we were on this full bus the boy stops and shoves another five people in. Keturah is literally hanging out the window. I have a women using my knee as her support as she leans in on all of us. There is a mans backside right up in my face and still the little runner boy is putting people on the bus. Apparently this is how it always is. Very full but never full enough.
On our way back to the house after our journey through town we got a taxi. You never get into a taxi without negotiating the price first. One you have the price set and where you are going than you can get in. Thankfully we had one of the sisters with us so she negotiated price for us. As she was negotiating with one driver all these other drivers gathered around. They wanted to see if they could give a better rate or help where this particular driver couldn't. Finally the original driver agreed to a price and we got in and left. Just as our Driver from the airport the experience was one of a kind and totally terrifying.
We are alive and well and so far I haven't seen any accidents so this could be a very good thing.


Jenessa