Greetings from Kolkata,

First off Happy New Year to everyone and cheers for all the Festive messages.

Sorry I haven't blogged for a couple of weeks, it was a bit of a mad rush to get back to India from Nepal, and to be honest the hangover from Christmas Day lasted longer than it should. Here's the update,

After returning to Kathmandu from Pokhara, Alex and I spent three days lazying around Kathmandu generally eating and going for a few beers. We managed to find a place that was doing Christmas dinner with all the trimmings (with mulled wine too) all for about 5 pounds. Not bad. We ended up going there for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and getting quite into the festive spirit. The Christmas dinner was awesome and we all got gifts from the restaurant afterwards. We all finished off Christmas by going to the pub and having a Shisha pipe and drinking till 3am. Pretty much like any other Christmas but with the Shisha this time. Alex left on Boxing day and I headed out out to Chitwan Nature reserve on the 27th to see the elephant races.

Sauraha (in Chitwan National Park) was a cool little place. You can do Safaris and Elephant rides there, as well as chilling out by the lake. I met up with Sarah again in Chitwan and we headed to the 4th International Elephant Race. Basically it's just like horse racing, but on giant Pachyderms! It was all a bit bizarre and the sight of an Elephant racing towards you is a little unnerving. Apparently they also hold the international polo championships there and Scotland are the reigning champions! We finished off a couple of days there by going to the Food festival taking place there. Basicaly it was an "all you can eat" (of Dhal Baht) for about 80p. It had a music festival type atmosphere with a rave going on afterwards. It was slightly soured though by the DJ stopping the party to tell everyone that Benazir Bhutto had just been killed. A fight kicked off so we kept ourselves out of the way. Still the party kicked off again and we amused ourselves by watching drunken Nepali men dancing away!

Our plan after Chitwan was to head south to the Indian border and head to Darjeeling. We caught the most crowded bus i've been on yet. The general rule is, you fill the bus up and then let double the capacity on again and then some more. We managed to find a seat and all was going well until the driver broke suddenly and a guy came flying forward and broke his fall by punching me in the bollox! He apologised profusely though, but it was a bloody painful bus journey after that. We had to change buses at Birganj as our plans changed when we got there. Basically it was such a s***hole that we decided to take another 12 hour to another border post on the western side of Nepal. I told myself that was the last time I listen to Sarah about buses and border crossings. So we boarded our next 12 hour bus for the border on the East. It was the most mental bus ride I've been on. We had to refuel pretty quickly so we pulled into a petrol station and waited quite patiently. I suddenly noticed though that right in the middle of the forecourt, a family was sitting around a bonfire casually warming themselves up. Equally concerned, Sarah then discovered that the guy filling up the bus was halfway through a cigarette! Thankfully we survived the potential inferno and headed out. We managed to bag seats at the front of the bus. As usual I managed to sit in the worst seat on the bus, with a cupboard above my head that i constantly knocked when we went around corners! We were also sitting at the front with a wide view of the traffic coming towards us and the potential crashes we just avoided. Despite all of this we managed to get some sleep. A t about 3am I woke up to find us going at the same speed but in dense fog! I decided it was best to ignore this and just hope that I might wake up the next morning. We reached the Indian border at 5am but we couldn't cross for another hour as the Neapli border guide was asleep!!! After waking him up and getting our departure stamp we were ready to go. The crossing was really picturesque at sunrise and all my previous bad feelings towards India melted away. It was really cool to cross the border on foot and all the way we had Sum 41: In too deep in our heads. This we decided, would keep us in good stead for what India may throw at us.

We hopped onto a bus to Siliguri and then a Jeep to Darjeeling. Darjeeling was an odd town to visit. It was really attractive, but you just wouldn't expect that kind of town on top of a hill. It had a a real British feel about it, from the buildings to the language and goods on offer. I of course sampled as many different teas as possible and impressed Sarah by confirming English stereotypes! We only had 1 day there and we unfortunately missed the Himalayan views due to foggy weather (told you it was really British). Our jeep ride down was quite evenful. We were really squashed in to the jeep and both Sarah and I had to deal with one mans wondering hands!! After our Molestation we jumped on a bus to Kolkata. As it was New Years Eve we made a plan to eat junk food and have a drink at midnight on the bus. Our plan was scuppered by the fact that we went to sleep at 11:30 and then woke up at 12:10. We had our celebration in the morning. Needless to say it will remain quite a memorable NYE!

There are lots of negative presumptions about Kolkata, but I've found it to be a nice, clean, up and coming city. I tried to find the black hole but it's alluded me. We've spent 4 days here in total and seen some really good sights. One of the highlights was watching a cricket game where we met a member of the team called Imran. He introduced us to the manager of the side and we watched the game for the afternoon. Sarah managed to upset Imran by saying " Oh my god, it's just like baseball". Imran replied that it was nothing like baseball and we had a good laugh and a joke for the rest of the day about Sarah. Hahaha Chang you know you love it! The only downers were my room. I guess I found the black hole and I was it's only resident. This morning I discovered the sewer smell was coming up through my bathroom which stunk big time and that I was sharing my room with one mouse and a cockroach. I evicted them fairly quickly and promptly checked out.

We are off to Varanasi tonight where we will spend a couple of days and then I'm off to Lucknow while Sarah goes to Amritsar.

Till then Mon amis

Will

P.S. I will upload the photos at Varanasi. I can't do it here for some reason.