Melanie and Gavin's Travels

INDIA - Hour 9 and counting.....

We have made it to India. And before I go any further I would just like to say that this is the fastest computer I have been on in months, it's a welcome relief. And for 23Rupees (70cents Canadian I think) an hour it's well worth it.

Yesterday we had a hell of a day leaving Chitwan and getting to the town on the Nepali side of the Nepal/india border. 1 jeep and 3 buses. When we got on the longest bus and started driving off within about 10 minutes it turned back around! I had spotted a big truck parked sideways up ahead and assumed there had been an accident. But no, in typical Nepali style there was a strike! A school child had been killed on the road and so the road was blocked until the driver admitted that he was at fault and would pay money to the family. I'd read about this bizarre way of doing things and hoped that it cleared soon, they were known to last for up to 24hours. We then went back to the scene and started lining up with people to cross, the strikers had lit tires and their polluted smoke could be seen from aways away. Within an hour we had past which was good.

Last night we ate our last momo's and dal bhats for a traditional Nepali meal, read our books and woke up at 5:30AM to cross the border. I know you are all thinking "That's early, aren't you supposed to be on holiday?" Well it's not always easy... and now we are wishing we slept in.

Upon hopping on a very overcrowded jeep we drove the 5km to the border. It's the most relaxed border crossing I've ever done. And so we arrived in INDIA, at 7am this morning with not a gun in sight, minimal signs of where to stamp out of Nepal and into India and garbage and dust everywhere. The place is dirty and loud and well we have just arrived so I shall try not to be too judgemental.

After waiting for one hour on an idling bus (polluted with one billion people, the planet has no hope!) we took off for the 2 1/2 hour bus ride to a city called Gorakhpur, a major transit zone. At one point the driver went off roading on a dusty hole filled road to pick up what appeared to be a passengers wife who couldn't have walked the 5 minutes? Seriously it took us on a 20minute dangerous detour since he then couldn't turn around.

Gavin and I are only slightly shell shocked, since Nepal is a lighter version of India. We went to the train station to book a ticket to Varanasi and the only one is at 10:45pm tonight, better than tomorrow I guess. The train station wasn't quite as bad as I'd imagined but the pollution, craziness of it all, the way the men are openly staring at me, the toilet in the train station, the hagglers on the street - well they are all living up to their reputation.

Our train is about 6 hours so we will arrive in Varanasi very early. We are riding Second Class sleeper which apparently a cheap way to travel but the backpacker way, we will have a cabin with about 6 people i think and bunks. I'm sure it will be a whole new blog, along with Varanasi!

It's nearly December and I hear it's between -17 and -28 between Calgary and Banff. Yikes! It's about 25 here I think, but I'm keeping modestly covered so we'll see how that goes. I figure we'll be here about 2 months, maybe hit Australia in February and Canada in March but it's all guesswork until the New Year I think.

I'll report again when I have seen something of interest.

posted by melaniewilkes @ 8:55 PM