India - glorious India.

We have just arrived in India after our 3 week stint in Nepal. After our trek we did a 2 day/1 night white water rafting trip which was awesome. It was so much better than i expected. We had awesome grade 3-4+ rapids and the water was absolutely beautiful - clean, cold and refreshing. We stayed in a wicked lodge by the waters edge in well constructed tents with a thatched roof and beds!! Typically we expected the food to be pretty poor but infact we had great meals including Buff (as in buffalo not beef) spagetti and peanut butter for breakfast which was a nice change from the usual eggs.

After rafting we went back to Kathmandu to meet up with our English friends we had meet over the last week for a last night out together. We proceeded to get very drunk, Lana more so than us as she was on the 2 for 1 cocktails. The early start the next morning to Chitwan was a bit tough but we managed. So Chitwan is about 200km south of Kathmandu on the way to India (although this still took 5 hours on the local bus). Even though you feel like you are going a million miles and hour in the buses it takes forever to get anywhere. Car accidents are quite common in Nepal. In the space of about 5 hours we probably saw about 5 accidents. One truck had run into the side of the mountain and tipped over, another had slide down the side of a mountain and then there is the typical head on collision as one truck tries to pass another and comes head on with oncoming traffic. All vehicles actually say 'please horn' on the back. Here it is a form of polite communication meaning 'i am approaching and overtaking' so you can imagine that a 6 hour bus ride involves a lot of horn blowing. So anyway back to Chitwan - it is home of Chitwan National Park which has elephants, rhinos and Bengal tigers to name a few. We were quite suprised as we had book the cheap tour but we had a fantastic bungalow right on the river followed by awesome food. Our jungle walk was disappointing as we only saw a crocodile but later that afternoon we took an elephant ride and our day got heaps better. We saw a mother and baby rhino bathing in a mud pond. We got within 3 meters of them. Thinking that that would be all we then went on a bit further and found another rhino forraging away. We got within 2 meters of him and he was not worried about our presence at all as we were on the elephant. We then saw some deer, wild boar, monkeys and lots of birds. Our last night with Lana we watched the sun go down by the river over a few drinks - very pleasant.

From Chitwan, Lana caught a bus back to KTM to the fly out tomorrow. We loaded her up like a pack horse with all our cheap chinese clothes and souviners - Thanks Lana. We took a bus to the Indian border and then a jeep to where we are now - Gorakphur. Lets just say it was a long day with a 5 hour bus ride on the 'local' bus crammed full of people in seats that were bult upright and with next to no leg room that my knees were pressed right up against the seat in front. Thankful to get out of the bus, we walked over the border and into India were we took a 2 hour jeep ride to Gorakphur. We thought the jeep would be more comfortable than the bus but we were wrong. Imagine a suzuki vitara (old and small version) crammed with 3 in the front, 4 in the middle (where we were) and then 4 in the make shift seats in the back with our luggage tied to the roof racks. I was the only female so i was pressed up against the door with the upper half of my body practically out the window with many people oogling at me as we speed past. So now here we are in Gorakphur killing time until 11pm when we will board an overnight train to Varanassi -the holy city of India. I automatically noticed the difference between Nepal and India. In Nepal the local men don't stare at foreign women like the Indian men do. Hence i arrived in India with a singlet on and it was all eyes on me. So Trent has since made me go put on a Tshirt.

Till next time.

Stay safe.

Gis and Trent.