Action-Man, 5 July, Nepal

This is a long bus to Kathmandu. Our bus driver seems petulant, but I can't know for sure, because I haven't even seen his face He's behind a glass compartment. Three conductors stand in the doorway. One collects money and one is in charge of starting and stopping. He hits the side of the bus and presses a buzzer. The third looks like the apprentice. The doormen balance themselves on metal bars, and one of them pulled back a tottering old man from falling out of the open door.

Drew and I sprinted out of the door of our hotel at the Nepal border this morning across a puddled, muddied bus station parking lot and took hold of the bus as it pulled out. It rained for the first time on our trip last night. We've been driving for many hours, and we are stopping too much. It wouldn't be so bad, if it didn't get so hot and sticky as soon as the bus stops. The windows are small and I am wrestling with the passenger ahead to divide the glass evenly. These seats aren't designed for long legs and high heads. The ceiling is low and when the boy ahead of me reclines his seat, the back threatens to crack my knee-caps.

A comatose gentleman with pursed lips and a faint patch of mustache and fez is next to a forlorn man with a thick purple turban. The second man likes to stretch out on the floor of the aisle. Ahead of him is a blind man with a hooked wooden cane. Many of the men have long pinky nails and small pony tails that look like rodent tails. At the last stop, a group of boys my age swept the dirt on the shoulder of the road with the heads of push brooms. Drew and I wonder if it isn't totally useless work

The demographer across the aisle says that there are 25 million people in Nepal. Drew says the language is beginning to sound more like Chinese. Faces are changing. Our innkeeper last night looked distinctly Korean. I see some Asian faces, like the doorman apprentice ahead, and I see some Indian faces.