A tourist describing Araniko highway. I was thinking why I always have vomit when I ride this bus but a tourist was also surprised.------ Nepal The Vomit Express Twice I've traveled overland from India to Nepal - ten years apart, and I think I recognized the bus.  The second time around, Gary and I were stuck at the back of the bus, both suffering from Delhi Belly, and Gary in great pain from his back, injured years before in a hang-gliding accident.   An old, toothless, Nepalese woman next to me spent most of the 11 hour journey throwing up out the window.  I understand why eating betel nut while rumbling over vertebrae jarring roads, sitting in the back of a rickety old bus that should long since have been retired can cause indigestion, but most alarming was that no sooner had she vomited out - and all over - the window, then she’d reach into her little red cloth bag and continue eating the onion and chilli laden concoction, the red blood-like betel juice dribbling out the corner of her toothless mouth.  I was grateful that I couldn’t eat anything that morning or I would have been sharing the window with her. "Kathmandu, I’ll soon be seeing you - and your strange, bewildering time, will hold me down.  Chop me some broken wood, we’ll start a fire, white warm light the dawn, and help me see - old Satan's tree."       - Cat Stevens  "Kathmandu" Kathmandu There are many cities in the world whose very name conjures up images of ancient times and a thousand thoughts about the mysteries of the world.  Perhaps no other city in the world has had as strong an impact on me as Kathmandu, truly one of the worlds greatest cities. Whether you’re sipping tea or smoking ganga or hashish in one of the many cake shops around Durbar Square, Thammel, or  Freak Street, renting a mountain bike to explore the environs of the monkey temple at Swayambhu, or visiting the funeral pyres along the river, Kathmandu is a city where time stopped - or at least it seemed that way in the Fall of 1979 - and I was surprised how little it had changed when I returned ten years later. http://www.traveltails.com/tta...