Our last border was unlike any other, but sadly not in a good way.

We booked a bus from Patna to Kathmandu, hoping to arrive by 7am. We left a few hours late and I started worrying about when the border would close. Once it got dark and we still weren't there, I stopped, assuming it would all be fine, safe in the knowledge that this probably happened often.

We got to the border at 10PM and those of us without Indian or Nepalese passports left the bus to be stamped out of the country. This was all fairly straightforward, nothing to worry about. However, when we crossed to Nepal, their border office was closed. Our driver called a number and we waited for the immigration officer to arrive.

When the officer arrived , he told us the office had only been closed for 10 minutes. When he looked at our visas though, he wasn't happy. The upshot was we had to get off the bus and go back to India. The slight snag was that the Indian border had now closed, so we couldn't get stamped back in. We therefore spent a night in between two countries, where (thanks God) a kind night watchman made us cups of tea and let us borrow his bed for a few hours. In the morning we went through Indian border control who after a few hours cancelled our exit on the previous night.

We spent the next day working out options, trying to figure out what to do next. After much prayer and with a heavy heart, we have decided not to try again, to hang up our hats and to head home.

This was quite an unpleasant experience and it has left us mourning a loss in purpose but we do not see it as a failure. Our goal had been to reach Nepal by land and this we managed. When we prayed, we felt God calling us back home to our families and friends. All through our journey we had been listening for God's guidance and to hear it so clearly is really quite exciting. There is no clear project for us to do (stay tuned for a possible Epilogue) but we know that the UK is where we belong right now.

Our adventure has covered 16 countries, approximately 28,700 kilometres and taken 18 days, 23 hours and 31 minutes on trains, coaches, boats and private hire cars. We have seen some beautiful sights, met wonderful people and discovered things about ourselves that we didn't know. We do not regret it in the slightest and we are left with lots of great stories, only some of which have been written here.