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December 4-5, 1998

"We woke up at 7 am, which was a little bit late. No matter, this was the moment we had come to Sunali to experience..."

We very easily could have taken a 70.00 US dollar flight from Katmandu to one of the many cities in india. However, we decided it would be much more Keruacian to catch a local bus from Katmandu to the sleepy, industrial border town of Sunali, and walk across the border into india. in india, we would continue to take local transportation to the city of Varanasi, one of the holiest places in india. We had left Josh to secure his own 6 month indian visa with plans to meet up in a few days. We were traveling with Aaron, whose Nepali visa expired on December 5 and who had to get to Delhi for a flight back to the USA on December 13.

We woke up at 5 am on the morning of December 4 and set out on our voyage. We got to the bus station/tourist office around 6 am. The bus station was clouded in fog and pollution with people huddled around fires drinking tea and making breakfast. The office, where we were to pick up our tickets, was, of course, closed. Apparently, the guy was asleep in his office, because as we were standing there trying to decide what to do next he stuck his head out the window and waved us up. On the bus it was just Mike, Jeff, Aaron and about 5 others; pretty sweet and in high contrast to most packed local buses. Pretty sweet that is until the next stop when a group of 20 train/railway indian Engineers boarded and filled the bus. After about 1.5 hours, the bus stopped for twenty minutes for breakfast (rice and dal, dal is a lentil soup), which we refrained from eating. The engineers proceeded to devour the food. About ten minutes after we started driving again the bus came to a rather sudden stop at a small village on the roadside. The engineers all got off the bus, and one turned to us and said, "flat tire." At the local service station, a family's home/shack equipped with air-compression tank and all sorts of rubber pieces and spare inner tubes lying around, the bus driver and some locals proceeded to remove the back tire. We took some time during the hour that it took to jack up the bus, pull the bad tire off, open it, find the hole in the inner tube, patch it, and put it back on the bus, to get to know our traveling companions. They had traveled two days by train to Varanasi from Madras, for a railway convention. The group contained mechanics, drivers, and other engineers of various kinds. We were intrigued by the fact that they were all of different faiths: Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Sikh, but obviously, were all very good friends. When the convention was "finis" they received their big perk - a one day vacation to Nepal, where, they amusedly noted, it was the only place their indian rupees were worth anything. As far as we could tell they rode up to Katmandu (18 hours by bus), toured the city (8 hours by bus), and were en route to Gorakpur (12 hours by bus) to catch their train home to Madras (32 hours). They couldn't quite comprehend a seven-month vacation and assumed we must be very rich. They also couldn't understand why we would leave good jobs to come to india. We discussed many things from work, home life, US politics (Clinton/Lewinsky - a common fascination), and even the testing of Nuclear bombs in northern india.

We finally got going again, and began picking up more and more people. We're not sure, but it seemed like the bus crew was making some extra cash by carrying people who didn't have tickets and pocketing money the company would never know about. At one point, every seat and all standing room in the aisle was full and an older woman sat down on Mike's armrest resting her bottom uncomfortably close to Mike's nostrils. When we got near Sunali, the bus’s final destination, the bus driver kicked off all the extras so the bus company wouldn't find out about the bus crew's lucrative racket.

in Sunali, we decided to change our nine-hour bus ticket to Varanasi (our first india destination) for a 3-hour bus ticket to Gorakpur, followed by a 5-hour train that was to leave at 3 pm. We slept at the hotel Mamta where our blood was pilfered all night long by a gaggle of mosquitoes (which we later found out were not mosquito bites at all, but were bedbugs). We woke up at 7 am, which was a little bit late. No matter, this was the moment we had come to Sunali to experience. We found the Nepal immigration office, did some paper work and walked into india, or more like ran. We were late for our bus, and we still had to find and go through indian customs.

We got through no problem, sat at a café at the bus station, had a Pepsi, and waited for our bus. The twelve person mini bus, which was taking us to Gorkapur had 25 people on it. it was a bit uncomfortable, but only a 3 hour trip. When we got to Gorakpur, we found out that the 3 pm train really left at 5 pm.

With two hours to kill we decided it was due time to try the local cuisine, and test out our digestive systems. We sat at a small café/dive across from the train station and ate Thali (a typical all-you-can eat vegetarian meal with rice, lentil soup, vegetable curry, a curd like substance, and chipatis, which are like tortillas). After Aaron and Jeff negotiated our food bill (three plates of food, three teas, a Pepsi and a mineral water) from 129 rupees to 96 rupees (or from 3 dollars to 2 dollars fifty cents), we went out into the street to put our stomachs through more rigorous training. We had somosas (a deep-fried pastry shell filled with potatoes and/or vegetables), chai (sweet milk tea), and some kind of fried potato cakes, covered in mysterious sauces, and served on a leaf! We figured if we were okay in 24 hours, we would be able to eat to our hearts' content over the next 2 months.