Today is a long day. We need to travel back all the distance we’ve travelled in the last 2 days. It will all be on highway driving and the paved roads here are very good, but it’s still a lot of distance to cover.
Google maps doesn’t work super well here but on a paved road it gives me an ETA of just under 5 hours and that’s not including stops.
We have breakfast and then get started. We opt to not stop at the monastery on the way out which is a good call. The day ends up being fiercely long as it is.
Because of the upcoming national holidays, the traffic heading west out of the city continues to be very heavy and it’s a steady stream of cars headed against us. While this means that our lane is relatively clear - it means we have people passing constantly into our lane the whole way back and between this and our own driver passing, my nerves are pretty shot by the time we get back to UB. Reading or sleeping are good ways to not think about getting in a high speed accident!
To be noted…I have otherwise felt completely and totally safe travelling here. The food has been good and other than taking the standard precautions for tourist areas that you would take anywhere, I’ve felt safe walking the streets and not scared of being pickpocketed like in other places. The driving however has been scary.
Unfortunately the coffee shops along the way are packed and the shelves picked dry so there isn’t much to eat on the way back. We arrive in UB and stop at the cashmere shop and then head to the hotel. I’ll be honest that I’m tired and cranky by this stage and we head to the hotel restaurant for a snack at 4pm.
We have a bit of downtime before we head out for dinner to Hazara. It’s a fabulous Indian food place. We have a great meal but opt to head back to the hotel and skip the show at the square. The city is in full Nadaam festival mode now, and while many people leave the city for this event, there are still lots of activities on the go.
It’s an early sleep for us. Tomorrow is the start of Nadaam! We are so excited.
No comments:
Post a Comment