Hello peeps, i am a few days behind so this is written as it happens but haven't had chance to post it due to having fun and lack of WIFI, so some of this is in the past tense even if its seems like its current, now i am babbling but you get the picture. We are currently heading from the city of Gorakhpur where we stayed last night to what the Indians see as the most holy city and one of the oldest inhabitable city's in the world Varanasi. Just a short drive of around 400KM however due to the Indian road conditions which I'll come to later this was going to take around 10 hours, in Josh with no AC and blistering heat. So i finished my last blog by saying that we had Chitwan in Nepal and heading for the Nepal, Indian border in Sonniel. It was only around a 4 hour drive however getting through Immigration and customs as been known to take hours and hours. So we left Chitwan at around 8am to pouring rain, huge contrast to the previous day. We reached the border around midday and by now the sun was out and humidity up. We approached the border and you instantly knew that the gorgeous country of Nepal was soon ending and the chaos, smell and dirtiness of India was quickly approaching. Immigration was a 2 stage process, first we had to exit Nepal and go through Nepalese immigration and then drive 100M further to the Indian immigration. Now for those of you that know India, there is no dedicated parking area, there are no paths, the shops, stalls, shacks basically sit on the road, so even for Immigration we just park up in the midst of rickshaws, taxi's, motorbikes, bicycles and people. Jodie and Paul collect all passports and head to the Nepal immigration 'shack', yep that's right a shack just set back from the road, no dedicated or official building, just a shack. The heat was now soaring, the truck was like a sauna, sweat poured from all of us. some of us decided to get dinner and here we had a taste of what was to come, an open shack with an open kitchen under a canopy, flies, dirt and nostril burning smells filled the air, this was going to be the usual for the next 10 days. We ate lunch, not bad but its not the taste you have to worry about, its what your 'really' eating, how old, fresh is it and how many flies have you got extra with it. Paul and Jodie returned an hour later, all good on the Nepal side. So we travelled 100M down the road and parked outside the Indian immigration 'shack'. This time they wanted to see us all, so well jumped out and waited for the passports to be stamped, this is where I mentioned yesterday and of course could only happen to me there was an issue with my visa. Even though i had applied for multiple entry and it clearly stated this on my visa that had been stuck inside my passport i was missing a stamp. Because i had already been to GOA then went to Nepal and now re-entering India this was classed Multiple, of course i knew this hence applying for the multiple, the India embassy in the UK should have also stamped my passport. i was advised that i wouldn't be able to enter, straight away i knew i was going to have to pay, the Immigration man with a slight smirk on his face said no problem, RS850, which is about £10, OK its not the end of the world but he was blatantly scamming, but what could i do, they wouldn't stamp unless i paid the cash, so i coughed up the RS. As we got back on the bus and drove off i saw him at the window he looked at me and just laughed, with gritted teeth i mumbled a few choice words! We then sat for about an hour in the town of Sonniel as the traffic was at a stand still, there was no reason for it apart from sheer volume. For those of you that have never been to India, there are no rules, no highway code and lots of lorries, the streets barely 10M wide have to carry cars, taxi's, motorbikes, bicycles, lorries, rickshaws and people, that's in both directions, overtaking and horn beeping is the highway code, no one has any patience, non at all, so what happens is that anything and anyone just squeeze into any gap they can, even if they cant get round, over taking with a on coming traffic? not a problem just flash and beep your horn and eventually someone will slow down and let the other pass, so basically its a game of chicken and that is no word of a lie. However messed up this highway sysyem is though, it seems to work, in all this traffic mayhem i have only seen one crash, OK i may have seen 1000's of 'near' crashes but no real accidents! So eventually we were on our way, we arrived late in Gorakhpur. I really don't want to say much about this place as it was a shit hole, sorry for the language. It was 8pm when we arrived, there was more horn beeping than ever, it was smelly and dirty. That was just the city, the hotel, well what can i say it was 5 star, and by that i mean -5 star. It was the most disgusting, dirty hotel i have ever stayed in. The toilet was a traditional Indian toilet in the floor, but it was black with
Varanasi was amazing and we did so much so when not so tired as i have been travelling all day today and this blog has taken 4 days to write I'll let you all know about it, its not 29th August and i am in Agra! Yeh few days still to update you on and will do at some point. hope you are all well.
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