Into India, The Last Chapter

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We had decided to stop in the Chitwan National park on the way into India, but this meant going down a road with a very bad reputation of cars and buses flying off the edge into the valley below, so we decided o get the tourist bus as this is the safest way to go apparently. The bus we were shown when we booked the ticket was nothing like what appeared to pick us up on the morning of the journey, it was an extremely old bus!! As we wound our way down the Kathmandu valley hundreds of old Nepali lorries chugged up the hill, beeping constantly. The local buses and mini vans were overtaking at every opportunity even on blind corners, no wonder there are so many accidents! Our bus was very slow though so I was happy and we made it to Chitwan with no accidents, however we did see several buses in ditches or smashed up in the middle of the road.

After going to the elephant breeding centre, we watched the sunset over the river to the National Park, then it was an early night ready for Rhino searching the next day. We got up at 6am in hope of catching the Rhinos before it got too hot. We were taken down the river for about an hour in a dug out canoe, as the sun was coming up it was really misty and it looked like the canoes were floating in the clouds, it was very beautiful, when we got further into the jungle the guide pointed out a few crocodiles in the water and insisted that we stop right next to it in this tiny little boat - crazy man! We walked back through the national park but unfortunately didn’t find any Rhinos. That afternoon we went for our elephant safari, when we arrived at the start there must have been 30 -40 elephants and hundreds of tourist, we didn’t hold up much hope of seeing a Rhino.. When we starting riding off though everyone went in there own direction and we did come across a huge Rhino wallowing in the mud pools, he rolled over and waved his feet in the air and then sat there still blowing bubbles in the muddy water, it was amazing to see a wild Rhino and on the ride back our elephant decided not follow the path but to drag us through bushes and trees, we were absolutely covered in branches and leaves when we got back. At one point he didn’t want to step over a tree that had fallen to the ground so he picked it up with his trunk and started waving it around.

There next day it was off to India, it was the easiest border crossing yet, in fact we could have walked straight into India without even showing our passports! We caught a bright pink bus down to Gorakpur to stay the night before we could travel any further and it had to stop every half hour to put more water in the engine. There was an old man sat in front of me who had a bad cough, he had his window open the whole way and every so often he would spit out of the window, one of the times he did this his spit came straight back in the window and landed all over my hands and arm and t shirt - disgusting!! When we arrived the bus driver dropped us a km from where he was supposed to, and we could tell all the locals were arguing with him about it, but there was nothing we could do, so we grabbed our bags and walked along the railway line until we got to the station. The room that was recommended by the Lonely Planet! Was absolutely disgusting, you have never seen anything like it! In the middle of the night I could here a noise outside the door and then I saw something move inside the room, I turned the light on and there was a huge rat munching on an orange I had left on the table.

It wasn’t a good first day in India but the next day we got the train to Varanasi, it was great sitting in the doorway and watching the world pass by and being out I the country away from all those beeping horns. We arrived in Varanasi and starting weaving our way through the maze of small alleys to find our guest house, it was a few minutes before a dead body was being carried past us on its way to the river to be burnt. There was a huge festival on the next day and Varanasi was absolutely packed, we decided to take a boat ride up the river at sunset to watch without being trampled on, we watched people swinging fire around there heads and burning insense while the bodies were being burnt at the waters edge. They say there are 300 bodies burnt here everyday, 24 hours a day, it’s a very bizarre thing to see. The locals were all lighting floating candles so on the journey back we rowed slowly through hundreds of floating candles, it was very beautiful but a strange experience.

There were no trains to get us to Agra when we wanted so we decided to make an extra stop in Lucknow, when we arrived late at night all the hotels were full, so we had no choice but to go to one that was over 20 pounds a night, (we usually pay about 3-4). The room was quite nice but when I pulled the bed sheets up to go to bed it was full of bed bugs, some dead and some still crawling around!! When we packed up and left half an hour after we had arrived the manager tried to force us to pay and got security, but we just kept walking and they haven’t caught us yet!!! India basically is just one large toilet, the men will pee absolutely anywhere and its definately the most dirty country I have been to.

We arrived in Agra the next day and went to Shanti Lodge which had an amazing view of the Taj Mahal from the rooftop kitchen. We wondered down to the river and got some kids to take us across for a better view, there was a perfect reflection in the river and there were no other tourists, so we sat and watched the sun go down, an amazing experience for such a well known tourist spot!

So its been a long trip, about 2 years and a month, we have been to 23 countries and crossed 25 borders, its all been a wonderful experience, but we have now decided to come home and will be back on Tuesday a couple of months earlier than planned. The reason for this is that on Friday morning in Agra at 4am we could here very loud shouting in our hotel, I went outside the room to see what was going on and there were lumps of fire falling from the floor above, in a complete panic we grabbed our passports and ran downstairs, for some stupid reason we decided to go back up and grab our big rucksacks as well because people seemed to be staying inside. We grabbed everything and starting running down the stairs, as we did there was a huge explosion and pieces of glass and wall were flying all around our heads, it must have been a gas cylinder or something? We managed to get outside fine though and everyone stood and watched our hotel burn in shock and there were several more explosions. It was like something out of a movie, the kind of thing you never think will ever happen to you. Only one person was badly injured and 3 lost absolutely everything in the fire. It was without a doubt the scariest experience of my life, when something like that happens you just want to be home home with your family so that’s exactly what were doing, see you on Tuesday!
Sarah xxxxxxxxxxxxx

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