Checking

So I may have mentioned checking before. Checking is what happens at Nepal's many many road checkpoints. What is checking? I'm not really sure.

The first time the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere I wondered if this was a rare event, some specific security occasion. But no, its not. On a later stop I began to question what the police may actually be 'checking'. They just seemed to stand about for a while as the buses sat there before letting them go. I tried to make up theories, perhaps this was a clever scheme to force the buses to obey the unrealistic 20kph speed limit on the mountain roads. It would be easy to stamp a permit with the correct timings for future checkpoints and delay them accordingly.

But no, a local person informed me that it was in fact my worst suspicions about Nepali policing. They are 'checking' for criminals, not by checking the documents or even names of the passengers or anything foolish like that, but by just looking at them knowingly for a bit. Do they check the luggage? In the more serious checkpoints they may give the nearest bags the slightest poke, just to check the luggage doesn't consist entirely of something unpleasant to poke.

There is a serious side to checking, some permit or other document is presented by the bus drivers at each stop. It's just another of those uncorruptible interactions where how long the bus sits somewhere depends on the will of a few police officers, I see no problem there.

Note checking is entirely different to the revenue collection points, where each vehicle, as nobody is likely to be following a 20kph limit, is taxed in turn. Luckily if you turn up at one of these points with large notes the police are happy to provide change.