Public Transportation in Nepal...

After their hike down from the monastery, it was time to catch a public bus the 125 miles (200 kilometers) to Mainapokhari, the mountain village where they would be spending the next 10 days volunteering on a variety of projects. They were on this express bus, so the outbound journey took six hours; the return took eight hours.

This was definitely the part of the trip that had me the most nervous. Marieke assured us that they had reservations, so there was no risk that the kids would have to sit on top of the bus.

Veronica actually had no idea if there were people and/or goats on top of their bus, but enjoyed taking photos of buses she saw during the trip.

Their backpacks were kept inside the bus for the outbound journey, so there was no worry that the bags would fall off a mountain, but were piled on top of the bus for the return. We found out afterwards that there was an avalanche in Jiri that killed several people just hours after they returned there from their expedition.