I met the group in the early afternoon. There is 15 of us, 4 britains (they live local to me) and the rest are ozzies and kiwis. The tour leader I think is going to be an inspiration to me, this is his 60th trip to base camp. He's also done everest marathon and came 11th last year, he did it in 4 hours 11 mins, I think the winner did it 3 hours 50 something. I asked him if he trained for it and he said no. We were given the instruction that we were to vegetarians...

The journey from chitwan to Kathmandu was a great journey that took us through lush green hills. Unfortunately the weather wasn't too great so visibility wasn't vey clear so we never got the opportunity to see the Annapurna ranges. We arrived at midday and after some pastry goods for lunch I went to the only genuine north face store in Kathmandu. I went abit silly as there was a 50% sale on all items so I took advantage of it. That evening we had a nice meal an...

I managed to get a good lie in before leaving for chitwan national park, we left at 8:30, which was amazing after the early starts. There was plenty of fog around which seems a common theme for winter mornings for both India and Nepal. The bus driver seemed quite aggressive, he kept hitting his son as he wouldn't let him listen to his music, personally I think the driver should be concentrating on the road especially with all the fog, nevermind the music that can...

It was an early start of 4:30 to start the 10 hour journey to the Nepal border. There was thick fog everywhere which was rather dangerous for driving, I was getting very anxious as I think the drivers ability to use faith as a tool for overtaking when he couldn't see more than a few feet in front of him was wearing thin. I'm not sure how we made it to the Nepal border with the dense fog, but we did, we even had a stop so that the bus driver could get a cup of cha...

We arrived in Varanasi earlier than expected as we cut the sailing down the Ganges a little shorter. Varanasi on first impression seems really noisy, like most cities in this country. We were taken out to walk along ghats, nearly all 90 of them. They were very busy and there were plenty of cows to dodge too. This is the last place we visit in India before going over to the border into Nepal, but it will be nice to not have to avoid all the different types of s*...