As land is scarce in hilly villages most of the villagers cannot live solely on their land; even those who have greater tracts of land cannot, for the cost of crop production is, more often than not, greater than the yield. No wonder that hordes of villagers travel down to the cities or the tarai in search of work during the dry season. But come summer these villagers start heading back to their villages to sow rice and corn, the staple foods.

It so happened that a group of 30-40 villagers working in brick factories in Bhaktapur, some 20 kilometer east of Kathmandu, were going back to their villages in Rolpa, the hotbed of the Maoist insurgency, in the same bus that I was in. The bus arrived a cool two hours late. And as it later turned out, the bus had gone to Bhaktapur to fetch those toiling migrants.

Puke

Some people get excited at the prospect of sitting beside a woman while travelling. I don't. On the contrary, I pray to God that a woman -- a rural woman at that -- is not plonked on the seat beside me. Why? Because the rural women usually don't get to travel much and, maybe for this reason, when they do they invariably start puking. Loudly, comprehensively, with that loud whoau sound that can be common in Nepali buses trundling around the villages.

This time around there wasn't a woman beside me. Thank God. But...

Among this group of seasonal migrants more than two-thirds were women. And the moment the bus hurtled on the road these women began puking; sure enough, some of them let go with the whoau sound. Those who were lucky enough to find a window seat puked out of the window; and those who were not so lucky, puked on the aisle. In no time the bus floor became with puke what the streets of Kathmandu would be after a rainfall. The bus reeked with vomit. Only the wind zipping through the window gave some respite.

Would you want to eat after going through all these? No, surely. But not these women. When the bus stopped for dinner, some of them chewed the rotis they had brought along while others crunched dry noodles, only to start puking all over again. Their puking stopped when we were half way through with our 20 hours travel and, it seems, only when there wasn't anything left in their stomach to puke. My God, I had never seen so many people puking at the same time and for such a long stretch of time!

Travel Ain't Fun

Travel isn't fun. Not when one is travelling to remote Nepali villages by bus.

While travelling to a remote district, one inevitably has to branch out of a highway and into an unpaved road. At Bhaluhang, which is on the Mahendra Highway, the bus took to the bumpy road going across Piuthan to Rolpa. Leaving Piuthan behind, the bus climbed up the road snaking around the hills of Rolpa. More passengers hopped in. The bus brimmed full. The bus grunted and sputtered. We got down from the bus and ran a 300-meter distance or so to enable it go past a steep climb. We reached the top of a hill and headed downward. Just when we thought that the road ahead was going to be easy the turnings seemed more dangerous: one front wheel off the edge and the bus would go hurtling down, and tomorrow's newspapers would say Bus Accident, All Dead.

We reached Libang, the headquarter of Rolpa, perched on a small vale at the bottom. Trembling and dizzy with fear.

Developing villages

Villages have to be developed as Nepal is a country of villages, so goes the cliché. But how? By linking the villages with roads. Which isn't easy in a hilly country like ours.

Many villages in Nepal have now been linked by a road. But the roads are unpaved. Worse, these roads get swept away whenever the rains start, making hill slopes slide down. A small portion of the road we were taking too was swept away by the overnight rain and we had to fill the broken road before we could roll ahead. Imagine what would happen to these roads in the summer, which is just around the corner. So much for developing the villages through road linkages.

To No Avail

I had wanted to go to Rolpa to have a feel of life in Maoist affected areas and learn about janashiksya (people's education) that Maoists have put forward as an alternative to what they called bourgeois education. I knew that it won't be easy to access the Maoist areas, since just two week's back a group led by the famous leftist writer Khagendra Sangroula was denied access into the Maoist areas near Libang. I thought that was because Khagendra Sangroula's unkind cuts at the Maoist movement are not unknown to the Maoists, and someone whose views haven't been as public as his would have a greater chance of entering into the Maoist areas. Moreover, I had thought I would have my way into the Maoist areas by educating the educators, as it were. The chance to educate the educators however didn't come my way.

I had gone to Libang armed with the names of three persons stationed there who could provide links to the Maobaadis. Unfortunately the two of them were out and the third, a reporter with a national daily, had little to help me with as he had no cultivated relation with the Maoists.

Discussions with people there led me to believe that it was not going to be easy to get permission to enter into the Maoist areas. Permission had to come from a top cadre and the top cadres are in the capital after the cease-fire. It could take days for such a permission to come, if it came at all. I asked a teacher, who taught at a school some three, four hours walk away from the place where the Maoists are practicing their janashikshya, if the lower rung cadres could tell me something about janashikshya. He told me that they couldn't tell me more than what he knew, as the Maoists now left in the jungles knew only a smattering of Maoist jargon and the gun talk and that I should find some one who is conceptually clear. I asked him what janashikshya was like. In reply he said, 'It is nothing more than training in the Maoist jargon.'

My talks with people were too discouraging for me to want to go deeper into the Maoist areas and that too alone.

And that was that. I took the bus back to Kathmandu, this time thankfully without my puking comrades-in-travel!

Ajit Baral is a frequent contributor to The Daily Star and various Nepalese newspapers. He lives in Kathmandu.