Wonders of Himalayas

Being already geriatric after ten years of hard work in India, it finally came to Nepal to become a mule for at least another decade.
The local bus.
They dressed it like a typical Indian woman: the outside was strikingly vivid just like a sari and its windshield was full of handmade tassels, like the ones you find on a tablecloth or an Indian puggree.
Every bus is unique here in Nepal. Every one has a different paintjob and inscriptions at its backside - "Horn, please!", "Good Day" or even "Buddha is watching you!". And he`d better, as the roads here are terrifying! Only 140 km to go, but it takes nearly ten hours. Instead of a destination sign they use a "busboy", an actual boy that controls and guides the bus. He is a barker, a parking assistant, a ticket officer and a porter. Throughout the whole ten-hour trip at every little village he is hanging out using only one hand from open door and shouts out our destination.
The bus stops every ten minutes to pick up new people, then the driver slams hard on the gas as often as he can and we are flying through endless serpentines, gravel roads, cliffs and villages. Everything becomes a blur. Especially your breakfast in the stomach.
Soon it begins to overflood with people, there are no seating or standing places, no room to fit the next batch of locals with huge bags of rice. With courtesy I give my spot to a pregnant woman and have no other option but to climb on the roof of the bus where two goats huddle together with bags. I grab one goat`s horn , a piece of metal roofing and sit on somebody`s backpack...
"Do I have a good Karma?", "It is like a rodeo, but scarier!", "That`s why they write "Horn please!", I thought. In twenty minutes people were everywhere on this bus - sitting on the roof, hanging from the sides, tightly packed inside. Cliff on the left side stretched down for hundreds of meters. Thousands terraces filled with water and young shoots of rice sparkled. Locals harvest here every 4 month. On the other side of ravine huge thouthand-foot waterfalls fell into the river.
While the bus swayed beneath me I felt a bliss. The scenery was so funtastic that you could almost imagine dinosaurs grazing on foothills and pterodactyls flying over my head. Blissful euphoria came through my heart as I saw white-headed giants – Langtang (7400m high) and Ganesh (6800m high). Our destination is on it`s foothills. Astounding adventure on the roof of brightly painted local bus. A wonder of being alive.