WHEN I finally sat down on my bus in Nepal, I sighed with relief.

In spite of the long journey ahead I was delighted to be on my way, at last.

My relief was somewhat shortlived when the driver placed a large canister in the aisle, which looked rather suspicious.

'Excuse me', I asked him, 'what is in this canister?'

'Diesel', he replied, with a sullen face that suggested I was an idiot for asking.

After ten minutes of arguing my case, he conceded defeat and took it off the bus. Not before changing his story and claiming it was actually "aromatic oil" he was trying to transport. Chancer. A couple of other passengers thanked me for speaking to him but I did wonder why none of them had said a word.

Anyway, we soon settled in to the journey - and what a journey. In the end, I spent forty hours on that bus. Much of which, in India, was uneventful. The bus was too bumpy to read anything without reacquainting myself with breakfast, and there was nothing to see, out of the windows. In fact for mile after endless mile, it was unbroken plains as far as the eye could see. And so repetitive was the view, I recall the three instances where there was actually something notable to look at, quite clearly. One was a small girl pulling down a tree branch so a cow could reach the leaves. The greedy cow loved it. Another was a makeshift cricket wicket, made from three crooked sticks stuck crudely into the red dirt in the middle of nowhere. The third, was a small monkey I saw sitting on the side of the road. He (or she) was clearly a baby, no bigger than a kitten, and sat alone, seemingly separated from it's family. And if I didn't know better, I'd swear he was crying.

Once we crossed in to Nepal, 28 hours after leaving Delhi, the driver turned into Mr Hyde. Possessed, and with a sense of urgency unseen so far (perhaps he needed the toilet), it was pedal-to-the-metal all the way to Kathmandu. Easy as it is to be flippant about it now, it was actually a nervy journey. Most of the ground we covered was uphill, on narrow, unlit, winding roads, and more than once, we shuddered to a halt with brakes screeching. We were held up at one point due to a crash ahead between a bus and a truck. Allegedly, the drivers had both got out, to fight it out in the middle of the road.

Later, during one "pit-stop" for tea, one of the other passengers I'd met, a Croatian guy called Zoran, gave me a birthday gift - a small stone he called a 'tiger's eye'; supposed to bring luck and safety to travellers. Now, I'm usually not one for talismans, but given that we still had three hours of hell to endure on the road to Kathmandu, I accepted it gratefully, and hoped for the best.

We made it, evidently. Not before one particularly fierce pothole had thrown me out of my seat and made me hit my head on the underside of the overhead lockers, much to my annoyance (and discomfort).

But never mind, none of it matters now.

I have arrived. Hello, Nepal.