The road to Nepal

From Auli I went back to Rishikesh, the bus journeys actually made the trip worthwhile anyway, even without taking the sledging into account. I spent the night in Rishikesh, and the next morning caught a bus to Delhi. Spent the night in Delhi, then took the night train to Varanasi the next evening, and met a French anthropology student who was doing a documentary in India for her university. She was going to meet her sister in Varanasi though, so I went to Shanti Lodge, one of the best places I have stayed in India. There was a dorm on the 8th floor, with wire mesh instead of walls on two sides, and loads of mattresses just scattered randomly inbetween plants around the room. The view was amazing, and two floors below was the resteraunt/bar which had a free pool table. I met a Welsh guy at the dorm called Jimmy, he had just come from Nepal but introduced me to two guys from England, Paul and Neil, who were leaving Varanasi for Kathmandu the next day, which was my plan as well. Got talking to them, they had also arranged to go with an American guy called Matt and his Polish girlfriend Anja, so the 5 of us got train tickets to Gorakhpur, the nearest Indian town to the border that had a railway station. Varanasi was really intense, incredibly dirty but fascinating as well, its a holy city on the ganges, and where the Hindus go to burn there dead. There are multitudes of holy cows, funeral processions and priests roaming the narrow streets. We took a boat ride down the Ganges, which gave a good view of the ghats, and saw all the India people bathing in the Ganges - not a good idea, the water is so polluted there its septic and has 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria per 100 ml, where in water safe for bathing there should be less then 500 bacteria... Enough said. We left for Gorakhpur at midnight, and from arrived at 6.00 in the morning. Got a bus to Sunauli which was very crowded, cramped and noisy. Temporarily put off the prospect of public buses, we hired a jeep to take us to Kathmandu, we managed to haggle one down to a price only 100 rps each more expensive then the bus (less then 1 pound).