Get Ready for a LONG Blog Entry

***I'm writing all of this on my iTouch, so please excuse the multiple spelling errors and weird extra words here and there!***

Wow, so it's been a while since I wrote last! I am currently in Pokhara, Nepal. I haven't had a chance to visit an Internet cafe and haven't stayed in a place with Free WiFi until now. Just so you know, this entry is going to be pretty long. Okay so let's start with India...

There is no mistaking it when you're in India. Nothing really prepares you for what you're about to experience...and what you're about to experience is chaos. Before we left the airport in Kolkata, we purchased a pre-paid taxi to our hotel. Just as the guidebooks said, when we walked outside, people came up to us asking where we were staying and telling us it was a bad place to stay and they knew of a better place. Ofcourse they were all on commission, so you really can't trust them. Our taxi finally arrived and we were off!

Driving in India is indescribable. Words simply can't do it justice. If I thought Bangkok was bad, India is 10 times worse. It took us over an hour and a half to get from the airport to the Inter-Continental Hotel. There seem to be no rules: cars narrowly miss eachother by millimeters, brakes are slammed every 10 seconds, and constantly honking horns become their own form of abrasive, head-hurting music. Local buses are CRAMMED with people. Sometimes people ride on the roofs of buses; it looks absolutely miserable, especially in the humid heat.

Driving through Kolkata is a very different experience. It's the old interspersed with the new. Beautifully vibrant colors (mostly worn by the women) move amongst the brown city filled with decrepid buildings. Numerous cows roam near the streets. This reflects the Hindu belief that cows are sacred animals...no succulent steaks or leather here!

Lucky for us, we've decided to visit India during one of Kolkata's biggest festivals. The Durga Puja is an event lasting for 5 days where idols of the 10-armed goddess are gaudily painted and placed in "pandals" or other colorfully painted tample-like structures. Then after the five days, the idols are all thrown into the Hooghlie River. Bright Christmas-esque lights drape dirty brown bulidings all over the city and I have to wonder if it was all done for the festival. The next day we would head to Varanasi via overnight train.

The next morning on our way to the train station, a view of Kolkata in the daytime was a lot different than what we saw the previous night. What was hidden by darkness and colorful Christmas lights was now exposed. In the light of day, you see piles of garbage that extend into the streets and both people and dogs rummaging through it trying to find something of worth. Different smells wafted into our taxi: diesel, cooking food, raw fish, feces, and rotting garbage. The sky is a constant hazy pinkish color (probably from all the pollution). He sheer number of people here is inbelievable. Never have I seen so many people in one place. I guess it makes sense when there are around 14 million people in the city of Kolkata alone and just over a billion people in all of India. At the train station we ordered some food and here are a couple things I observed: 1.) the cooks don't use glows when preparing your food, so you have to judge wisely where you eat and only go where the locals go, 2.) Indians use only their right hand when they eat. The left hand is considered unclean.

On the overnight train to Varanasi we shared a sleeper bunk with a nice Indian family and another family they were friends with. Imagine a rectangular room with only three walls and three fold-out hard beds stacked over eachother on both of the longer walls. Grant and I both didn't get much sleep as the beds weren't very comfortable. We arrived in Varanasi around 9 in the morning.

Varanasi, like much of the other Indian cities I've seen is crowded with lots of people, cars, rickshaws, and of course pollution. But add to all that many cows, goats and chickens roaming the streets, holy men draped in vibrant orange cloth with red marks on their forehead and you've got Varanasi. The city is one of the oldest continually inhabited places and is one of the holiest cities in the Hindu religion. There are many ghats that line the Ganges River. The ghats are used to cremate the dead. Hindus come to Varanasi to cleanse themselves in the Ganges, as it is one of their holiest rivers. However it's also considered one of the dirtiest rivers in the world because it is used as a toilet, a garbage, a place to wash clothes, and sometimes dead animals are spotted floating in the river.

Many guide books say that if you're ready for Varanasi, it might be your most favorite place; this was not the case for me. My allergies kicked into high gear the moment I stepped off the train. It must've been all the dust and animal dander that did me in. We roamed around aimlessly in Varanasi, taking winding side streets that got us lost a couple times. Honestly, walking around not knowing where to go in relentless heat with sneeze attacks happening every 10 minutes was not my idea of fun. So we decided not to stay a night in Varanasi; instead we planned to take another overnight bus to Sonauli then take another bus to the India/Nepal border. Little did I know it would be the worst bus ride of my life.

Before getting on the bus to Sonauli, we met a fellow backpacker named Esther. She's 27 years old and is from Holland. We three got on the non-air conditioned bus, cramped bus expecting to have a pretty uneventful trip. The ride started out bumpy with lots of screeching halts due to the traffic in and around Varanasi. But the bumps never smoothed out. For about 6 hours we endured one of the bumpiest rides of our lives. Then, around 1:30am the unthinkable happened. After dropping off a cpuple passengers in a small town, we heard a loud bang... It was a tire exploding. We rolled really slowly to a food shack nearby and everyone got off. We didn't speak Hindi so we basically had no idea what was going on. We decided to wait until someone told us what to do, so we sat down and had a couple glasses of Chai Tea. After about 20 minutes or so, another bus pulled up on it's way to Gorakhpur. The driver said we wouldn't have to pay, so we got on that bus along with a handful of people who decided to come with. It was another bumpy ride to Gorakhpur with multiple mosquito bites, but at least a little more room to move. We arrived at Gorakhpur around 5am and crammed into a jeep-like taxi to go to the bus station where we needed to catch yet another bus to Sonauli. 12 of us packed into the car with all our belongings. It was a TIGHT fit. We were like 2 cans worth of sardines stuffed into one. I sat on Esther's lap as we made the bumpy but thankfully short ride to the station. We immediately hopped on the bus to Sonauli, which took a few hours. We were dropped off and walked a little ways to the border. Once we got out exit and entry visas, we sat down to have some lunch before trying to find a bus to Pokhara, Nepal.

I'm pretty sure we got ripped off when we purchased our bus ticket. We went into a little office that sold bus tickets. Once we paid 410 Nepali Rupees each to get onto the bus, the guy led us past the real ticket counter where our salesman exchanged a few words with the people behind the counter. If we had went up to that counter individually or just waited until we were on the bus to pay, we most definitely would have paid a lot less. Oh well, I guess you learn from your mistakes. Remember when I said the bus ride from Varanasi to Sonauli was the worst bus ride of my life? I was wrong. The bus ride from Bhairawa (Nepal's side of the border) to Pokhara was definitely THE WORST of my life. It was even bumpier than all the other rides and the fact that we had been on uncomfortable trains and super bumpy buses for basically 16 hours straight really didn't help. The trip took about 8 hours; but it felt like so much longer. The seats were hard and riding in that bus reminded me of riding in the back of a pick-up truck that was travelling over some really REALLY rocky terrain. By the time we got to Pokhara, it felt like we had been thrown around like rag dolls; my neck felt like I had experienced whip lash several time over and my butt/tail bone were as sore as ever.

Our taxi driver couldn't find the guest house Esther was looking for, so we just got out and walked around trying to find vacancy. The last handful of hours on the bus, I was continually blowing my nose and had developed some kind of post-nasal drip. So by the time we were trying to find a place for the night, I really wasn't feeling well. Esther decided to go with a place that had a cheap single room, but Grant and I opted out because the double room there was too expensive. We stumbled across the Pushpa Guest House and just decided to take the room because we didn't want to keep looking.

All night I kept waking up to blow my nose. This morning I woke up feeling sick. I've had to constantly blow my nose, take ibuprofen for my small fever and drink as much water as possible. Basically my first day in Pokhara, Nepal was spent in bed; I didn't take a step outside. Grant definitely took care of me. He bought me a bunch of water and went out a couple times in search of food for me. He looked up my condition and said found out that I have textbook Sinusitis (probably caused by all the pollutants and allergens in India). It's currently about 10pm and I feel better, though I have developed a small cough. I hope I am better by tomorrow! I want to explore Pokhara!!!