J: So we could have easily sneaked over the boarder to Nepal. The bus dropped us off at 4am, and as usual the Tuk Tuk drivers wanted to drive us a 10-minute walk. We both said no and a helpful family guided us to the boarder. We had to wake up both immigration offices, who weren't particularly pleased with us, but at least we entered the country legally.

S: Honestly, I felt like I was in an action movie. It was pitch black, no one around and there we are crossing the border - very stealth I think!! Bearing in mind we had just travelled 10 hours to cross the border, we hopped straight onto another bus (which looked and felt like a hippy 60's bus) using the last of our Indian Rupees and found ourselves in Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha. We found a hotel, and put our heads down for a couple of hours.

J: We rented a couple of bikes from the local street food vendor, they were old city bikes with just one gear.... Who has a bike with one gear?? It was great to be on a bike though and we went to see the birthplace of Buddha, it was really cool to find it and there were temples built by different countries to respect/worship the area. On entering the Temple, we had to hand over our playing cards, matches and my penknife. The knife and matches we could understand, but playing cards??? The Temple was full of prayer flags that represented different elements of the world. We liked them so much we brought some for ourselves.

S: James had become quite fond of Momo dumplings (Nepalese vegetable dumplings) and we seemed to be eating them at every meal from the local street vendor. The man selling them was so chuffed we went back in the morning for breakfast, I'm sure he gave us extra.