... So today I was sitting outside the shop from 7am to 8.45am waiting for it to open...but he'd done a great job and refused to take any extra money.

- I got on a bus which they were still repairing ...left at 9.30am.. they had stop to repair it on the way
.. Nepali maintenance - wait until something goes wrong not before

... but what a mess of disorganisation at the river crossing.. The main road to Eastern Terai is broken at Koshi River and you waste an hour in the transport calamity there.
- What happens is that buses get to the causeway and try to get as far as they can so they can get return passengers. So both sides of the causeway road are blocked with 200 parked up buses. There are rickshaws waiting to take people the 1.7Km to the river boats, but they struggle to get through the parked buses so you pay for the rickshaw and still end up walking across the sand some distance anyway.

- Suicide Boats Then when you reach the boats there is no system apart from some being people only and some being people only. So each boatman wants as many passengers as possible so he dangerously overloads the boat ..some are bailing water out like crazy.
- There didn't seem to be any police, any rescue boats any life jackets ..someone will die sometime.

It costs 50Rp to cross the 400m gap then of course disembarking is chaos with so many boats and passengers in a hurry.
- Then once you are on the opposite sides buses block that causeway as well.

- I knew to walk right to the last bus as it would be the first to leave, but I was unlucky buses must have just left and it took an hour for my bus to load up so it was dark by then.

- (30th December newspaper reports the government is going to start a ferry service up river at Chatara so I'll see if that works better on the way back, a check revealed the same newspaper report 4 months ago "Jet barge for Dharan-Chatara passengers")

- 1. leave a space at the end of the causeway for a turning circle
- 2. The bus could travel right to the end of the causeway .
- 3. After dropping the passengers the bus could turn around and drive back down the causeway. turn round again and take his place at the back of buses parked along the left side of the causeway.
- 4. When bus reaches the front of the line he can then travel into the reserved space at the end of the causeway turn around and pick up the next passengers. And cos there would be only be buses parked up one one side he could get down easily.

- better still would be to make the last town a bus park and make everyone transfer to a shuttle bus to the boats then you'd have no buses at all blocking the causeway.

- Any good government would have organised a car ferry. It wouldn't be quick enough to transport buses, but people and bikes would be OK. That way a shuttle bus could just drive passengers right through.

- Simple boat solution - If the boatmen co-operated they could take it in turns ..pool all the money and then they wouldn't need to overload the boat as they all would get the same money.
- Bob would be on duty load up 50 people collect the money cross take a break until it was his turn again. Then Bill, then Jack etc

- That's the problem see the cartoons on the Nepal Cartoons