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Although we've said a couple of times that we were looking forward to the creature comforts Kathmandu has to offer; when we got our first view of the sprawling, polluted Kathmandu valley at 10.30 this morning, it was much more of a sight for sore eyes than we could have ever anticipated. 

On Sunday morning, we were up about 6am for an early breakfast following which set off down the hill. Purna had arranged a small leaving presentation which involved several of the older students and teachers lining up to put thin silk prayer scarves around our necks in Buddhist tradition. This was a bit of a surprise but a very pleasant one; it was a little surreal saying goodbye to everybody and it caught us off guard to the extent that we forgot to tell Purna where we had left a stack of exam papers! Fingers crossed that they are found in time!

We perhaps jinxed ourselves talking about the pattern of sunny mornings, as we woke to a wet mist and the day only got wetter. This is the perfect kind of weather for leeches and so Purna gave us some tobacco which you rub around your shoes and socks as apparently the leeches don't like it. However, whilst this may have helped, we picked up several including the first that drew blood on Heather.

The descent was quite rapid but exhausting, we were both surprised by how quickly we both felt very tired and shaky legged despite the fact that we were losing altitude so things should have been getting easier. By the time that we got down to the road head at Thimbu we were both feeling spent; however, what we didn't know was that we had several more trials and tribulations to come.

There had been a pretty dramatic landslide further down the road, so we had to walk for half an hour or more further along to get to where the bus was going to set off from. When we finally crammed ourselves into our seats on the bus, we were soaking wet, tired and malodorous.

It would be dishonest of us not to mention our admiration for the porters, like Sun, who once again carried both of our large rucksacks in a basket strapped to his head and was preparing himself for the return trip up to Melamchi as we left. We can only imagine how tired we would have been carrying all of our own stuff. Porters are hard as nails.

The bus left at about 1pm and we were relieved to be on the way, thinking of a warm shower and a nice dinner that evening. Things were going to plan until about three hours in when the bus started to get bogged down in the mud. In places the road, which is nothing more than a dirt track, had turned to a mud bath in the rain. This was slow going and a bit hair raising, slipping around in the mud on steep ascents, but clearly nothing out of the ordinary; the bus conductor had a shovel handy and would jump out to dig us out of trouble.

Progress slowed to a crawl on one particularly churned up hill, and no matter what the growing crowd of shovellers tried, we were going nowhere. The bus driver reversed back down the hill and took longer and longer run-ups with the revs high and the clutch starting to smell. We seemed to be getting stuck lower down the hill with each attempt though. Seemingly disheartened, the bus driver eventually killed the engine and disappeared up the road on foot. We weren't quite sure what to make of this, but got wind of the fact that another bus was trying to get up the other side of the hill. Perhaps they had a cunning plan?

Quite some time later, however, the other bus appeared at the top of the hill, and our driver climbed back into his seat and engaged reverse. We don't think we were the only ones with white knuckles as both buses slid down around half a mile before our bus did a 20 point turn in an alarmingly narrow and muddy section of the road.

As we pulled back into the small village at the bottom of the hill, the engine went off again, and it became apparent we would not be attempting the climb again before dark. Thankfully a couple of gents we recognised from Melamchi were also on the bus, and although they don't speak much English, they managed to explain to us that we'd be staying the night in this village – they also explained with a shrug that there are 'no rooms', and later on the toilet arrangements with the word 'jungle'.

The village seemed poor, dirty and lacking in any facilities other than a small dingy tea-house where a man stirred a sauce pan lined with burnt-on treacle-like deposits (in stark contrast to how meticulously clean everything had been in Melamchi). Heather's stomach had been playing for a few days before this anyway, and we had no desire to end up fertilising the jungle all night, so we bought a packet of biscuits for dinner and started trying to make a comfy nest for ourselves in the bus.

We were still in our damp, sweaty clothes so we managed to discreetly change into sarongs and finally get our boots off (this may not have helped the odour on the bus which was already getting interesting by this point). Getting comfy was not an easy task as we had already been sitting on the hard seats for 5 or 6 hours by then and there was not a lot of room to stretch out.

Sleep was hard to come by and we only drifted off a couple of times, we had to try not to look at watches and shift around a lot with aching bums and legs. So we were quite relieved at 4.30am when people started getting up and stretching off. The rain had stopped some time in the night and, although it was still very muddy when we climbed off the bus, we were rewarded with a beautiful sun-rise, and to our surprise the best view of the Himalayas we've seen so far in Nepal.

Rather frustratingly no-one seemed in much of a hurry to get going despite what seemed like pretty good conditions to us. Eventually around 6am everyone was on board and we set off up the hill again... however, it was nothing but a repeat performance of the night before. It didn't take too long before the driver stopped the engine once again. This time our friends explained what we were to do with the words 'left, right'. Cold, wet boots back on, rucksacks loaded on backs and we tramped off up the hill not sure where we were or what lay ahead.

We were surprised when only 15mins later, at the next village, everyone dumped their loads and got ensconced in another dingy tea-house. Just outside was a large, flat bed truck having a wheel replaced – this was to be our next mode of transport apparently. 

Over the next hour, nobody seemed to know when we would be setting off in the truck, and two strange things happened. First of all a man was busily cleaning what looked like a chemistry set by the side of the road and as we watched he span what looked like a horizontal fly-wheel several times, then took it apart and pulled out some centrifuge tubes. There were milk churns all around him but the liquid in the tubes looked more like blood. We didn't get much further working out what was going on there before we were greeted incoherently and a little aggressively by a scruffily dressed gent who seemed agitated about something. He was trying to talk to us in English but it became increasingly obvious that he was either drunk or a chapati short of a picnic or both. We were becoming quite uncomfortable before, thankfully, some of the other stranded travellers and villagers persuaded him to stop disturbing us. One of them confirmed our suspicions by saying he was 'mad' and had been drinking a lot (not bad going at 7am!).

Just as we were wondering whether the truck was ever going to go anywhere, everyone suddenly leapt into action and Heather was bundled into the cab at the front with 6 others and Drew clambered into the back among several other passengers and the aforementioned milk churns and we were off again... 100m up the road the wheels were spinning in the mud and deja vu set in. Luckily, whether the milkmen had a better vehicle or better shovelling technique, they managed to get through everything the road threw at them. It was pretty arduous journey – when we weren't getting stuck in mud, we were stopping to pick up more milk churns which it seems farmers leave filled up on the roadside to be collected and taken into town.

That brings us up to our first glimpse of Kathmandu after about 3 long bumpy hours in the milk truck. It was only then that we dared to believe we might actually have the shower, decent meal and clean bed that evening. By this point we'd been travelling for well over 24 hours, and had eaten only a few biscuits along the way.

There was another hour or so in the lorry descending into Kathmandu valley, for which Heather moved into the back. On the outskirts of the capital, the lorry set us down, and our friends helped us onto the bus to Boudha, where we're now sitting typing this. We're in dry clothes, have had a warm shower and a nice lunch. Now the only challenge remaining is staying awake until the dinner we've been promising ourselves for days. We suspect we might fall asleep in our beers!

Only a couple of days to recover, catch up on e-mails etc.. and buy a few essentials, before we're off to the next school (by bus!)... Trying not to think about that this afternoon though.

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