Day One-Kathmandu 1420m to Besi Sahar 820m

We catch an old white Datsun taxi from Potala Guesthouse in Thamel to the local bus station at 6:15am. I am nervous about the bus, which is a local bus, as there is no tourist transit between Kathmandu and Besi Sahar, the starting point for the Annapurna Circuit Trek. We have come to understand "local" means more people, more animals, more speed and less caution; my kind of party.

The morning is misty but clear-about 65 degrees-and the sun is a reddening disk low on the horizon. We forego small-talk with the smiling driver, intently speeding and swerving the entire 20 minute drive, who drops us at the curb and points us toward the throng of restless, shouting Nepalis in a concrete compound centered in the bus yard.

Hesitation in our approach to the building (decorated in only Nepali) baits us for the predatory group of 20 who circle, shout and pull at our arms. Are we in the right place?? After a few loud and helpless minutes, we follow a young Nepali- who has decided to snatch our tickets- behind the compound into an empty lot with two vacant buses. I guess this is our ride to Besi Sahar.

In my flip flops, I climb onto the roof and lift our two packs into the luggage bin: a crude rectangle of aluminmum bars raised from the roof about 6 inches.

Stamped on the tickets is a warning of zero responsbility for lost bags. Because the luggage rack is on the roof, watching our bags all the time would entail sitting on them; something, in Nepal, I'm not ready to do. In Kathmandu, we learned baggage "loss" is frequent on this route, and one couple arrived in Besi Sahar sans backpacks, after an 8 hour ride away from civilization.

Hoping to thwart possessionless arrival in a remote Nepali village, I padlock our bags together, as I can't fit the lock to the luggage bar. Dangit! I cross my fingers and charge Troy to monitor roof activity at each stop.

At quarter til 7, the bus, scheduled to leave "promptly at 7am" ( as relayed from the travel agent) is still deserted, and we ponder possible misunderstanding as tens of crowded buses are departing from the front parking lot. Over the next half hour, there's a slow trickling-in of passengers, who, in their congregation by the bus urinate, brush their teeth and blow snot-rockets. One nasty fellow distances himself a few feet from the bus before defecating.

At quarter til 8, the bus driver, cute and about 18 years old, saddled-in, quickly disspelling the morning calm with, what would become, a routine battery of the shrill, multi-tonal horn.

Annapurna, here we come!

Forcefully, the driver commanded access to each foot of pavement with jarring blasts of gas and brake, a method of allowing drivers with the will ( or rather intoxication level) to collide with people, vehicles or animals through first. For me, this style of driving, though familiar, is still not quite tolerable. I pondered the status of the 3 Spaniards and 16 Nepalis riding our luggage as my skull-cum-wild-pendulum smacked the seat cushions after each gas-brake crescendo.

Finally free of the city traffic and loose on the mountain road, we fully memorized an upbeat Nepali song which seemed to last two hours though having only 4 lines. I can't complain, as with the whole bus humming along, it was actually pretty cool.

The countryside is gorgeous; lush, green and wet. The hills remind me of California, but the rice-patties remind me I'm quite far from there. Unfortunately, the real mountains are obscured by the closer hills and mist of the morning, but we're getting closer :)

Just before 11, we slow behind a large stopped dump-truck; the driver of which seems to have departed his vehicle in front of a steep switchback. We sit, stopped, for a few moments before our driver implements his plan of action: repetitive horn-blowing. Now visibly annoyed, he hops out and walks around the bend. Troy and I hang our torsos from the open windows to catch a glimpse of a 35-seater passenger bus which had just sailed off the road and plunged into the ravine.

A few minutes pass, we realize we are all impotent voyers, and people sadly, slowly return to their transportation to finish the journey. I don't know if it was full, or how many died, but I know to survive a fall of 1000ft inside a bus is dubious... Paying closer attention to the foot of the steep ridge we drive along, I notice the evidence of these frequent happenings littering the riverbed below. By the time we reached Besi Sahar, I'd counted six.

High clouds string together in the late afternoon, and we still can't see the mountains. Late, but thankfully safe, we arrive and check into a shockingly basic room where I struggle to embrace the smells, spiders, poor lighting and general filth in the name of adventure and experience.

We lose power at 7pm, which seems to excite the local children who spend the next 5 hours launching bottle rockets and fire crackers outside our window. No matter, though, as we were exhausted from the journey and sleep like babies.

Besi Sahar, like many other small Nepali cities linked to mechanical transit, has all the negative elements of a city, with few of the positive ones. It's littered, noisy and crowded, but we won't be here for long...

The saga begins!!