Road trip part one of many

[NaNoWriMo 15]

[Warning: This is poorly written and completely unedited. I just want to get a novel written soon.]

"Brother, the trip is going to be seven hours long, you are ready for that," Shyam bhai asked.

"I have driven East Coast to West Coast many times. This won't be very hard, I think," he said, looking out of the window. "How are the roads these days," he said, taking his right hand out to feel the air's warmth.

"My friends were saying that they've repaired recently, but some parts are really bad re. We couldn't have gone in my car. It was really lucky that you were able to arrange this Jeep. Hahaha, Shyam's Maruti wouldn't even cross the first hill," Harkit said from behind.

"Yeah, this was one of the UN donated vehicles they brought during the weapons inspections. I have a contact in the Ministry. After you guys talked about traveling, I told him about him, and asked him if had anything that would drive well. All the inspectors are gone now --" Raul said -- "now that the weapons have all turned to dust haha, so it's a good time to make use of the available resources". He put a multi-stop map routing in his phone GPS, and put it in the dashboard in front of him. He looked at the driver. "Can you take us to Patale Bhyanjyang? We're going to drive round all the hills of Kathmandu. You can do it, right?" Raul asked, teasingly.

"Of course sir, it's been twenty years since I've been driving," the driver said, looking out of the window. "Are we stopping anywhere for lunch, or driving throughout?" he asked.

"We will stop at a couple of places. We are going to eat trouts, and I've ordered half a goat, and a local chicken, all at different places. If that's not enough, you'll be tipped to eat at a couple of more places," Raul said.

"No, no, it will be enough," the driver said, looking ahead, smiling.

The jeep was mostly quiet. Raul had made everyone get up at six in the morning because Shyam bhai had wanted to get to as many hill-tops as possible, and Raul wanted to get back on time. His hangover was milder than everyone else's: he had pretended to have diarrhoea to avoid drink the previous night. The other two, however, had gone all the way. As Harkit had said -- "Hungover or not, Raul is going to make us get out and get into the car anyway, so we might as well indulge all the way in". They had stayed in late. Late, of course was relative -- this was the late-thirtysomething staying out -- they had all gone to bed slightly before midnight.

The morning traffic was light. Most of the vehicles on the road were either delivering vegetables, or transporting students. Around Pepsicola in Bhaktapur, while waiting for the traffic light, Raul saw a farmer watering his Cauliflower fields with a dark-grey sludge from the nearby Bagmati. Avoid eating Cauliflower outside the house, Raul took a mental note. Soon after, the both sides of the road were dotted by clay mines and tall chimneys of brick-kilns. The kilns weren't running, they weren't yet spewing the reddish-brown noxious fumes yet. The workers were hard at work laying large piles of raw clay, cutting them with metal stencils, and collecting dried and cut bricks into large piles. Their skins, weathered by the elements, looked like old tanned leather that was peeling off. Raul saw young kids following their mothers as they skillfully tossed bricks into large piles on their heads to carry into the kiln. He could see one pair get ready for breakfast, the mother unwrapping a knot in her sari to reveal beaten rice, sugar and a few pieces of cheap wheat biscuit. I wonder what they're thinking, Raul thought, and what they think about their future. He didn't feel like following that thread of thought -- it hurt his head. He sighed, and looked straight ahead at the road.

Children dressed in light blue t-shirts ambled on either side of the highway, in straight lines on their way to school. A few had bags, most carried textbooks and notebooks on their hands; the girls had had put on the pens as hair pins. The kids waved at the jeep. As always, Raul waved back.

The Sun was considerably higher up in the sky now, and people out for morning walks had returned. People were out and about in convenience stores on the way to get fresh milk and vegetables. Office workers were getting ready to head out to work. Farmers, who had been working out before the sun had gone out were resting, getting ready for another round of work before it got too hot to work. Traffic was getting heavy around Banepa, they shared the road with motorbikes and scooters. There were more uniformed students riding the motorbikes than Raul had imagined there would be. A lot more mixed couples too, Raul noticed.

Raul decided to stop for light breakfast. He wanted something sweet and something savory, but not too filling. Chana-chiura-and-jeri, he decided. He instructed the driver to stop at a clean-looking place. He looked behind: his co-travellers were fast asleep despite their heads violently bobbing around. "Shyam Bhai!" he shouted. Both his friends stirred, but neither opened their eyes. A few minutes later, the driver slowed down the jeep and asked Raul if the nearby place was ok to stop at. "Yeah, lets stop, I'll wake them up there," he said.

They stopped in front of a garish blue-colored house by the highway. There was a handpump at the front of the house, and the pile of sand and stones laying around suggested the house was a new construction. Three little kids with only shorts on were running around their mother, who was trying to shepherd them into the house.