Overland to India

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Today we left Chitwan and headed for the Indian border town Sunauli. The local bus ride was meant to take 2.5 hours but 6 hours later we arrived. Slight hick up on the way, our bus broke down, the throttle cable snapped. That did not stop us. The driver’s assistant took the throttle cable by the hand while the driver had control of the brakes and steering wheel - worked surprisingly well. When we got to a garage they replaced throttle cable for a mere 400 rupees including labour.

We got dropped off at the bus station and a poor auto rickshaw driver had to haul us and our bags for 4km, up a slight gradient, to the border crossing. We had no Indian rupees and a lovely Australian couple who were on the bus with us, Scott and Bianca, helped us out. At the border, which was a bustling, filthy hole to say the least, we caught a taxi, with Scott and Bianca and an American couple that we met to Gorakpur. Along this journey I had my first terrifying experience of Indian toilets!

Arriving in Gorakpur was probably not the best introduction to India - it is a heavily populated shanty type town with a major train station. We stayed in a pretty gross hotel but had a delicious meal with our new friends. Having no idea what to do, we had assumed you could just book a train for the next day without too many problems. This was not to be, and if Scott and Bianca had not shown us how it worked, we would still be looking at the Indian Rail website today! We had to change our trip as most of the trains we wanted were fully booked and we ended up catching a train with Scott and Bianca to Varanasi the following day.

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Photos

Bus Ride
The guy on the left has the throttle cable in his right hand, whilst the driver has control of the steering wheel and brake, good luck....