Notes from a Wandering Daydreamer Life as it should be...

calcutta. here I am. although suprisingly it is not really the image of the city that springs to mind whenever you usually hear the world. I didnt really expect to be here so soon, it was a rather annoying series of events that led us to being here early, and flying to bangkok tomorrow morning.

but back to nepal, where after our bungy jump we headed west to pokhara where we spent a week in the sleepy lakeside town just relaxing and unwinding, escaping from the worries of the world for a while.
pokhara is truly a beautiful place. we spent our first day on the lake, hiring a boat and paddling ourselves outinto the middle. it took us a while to figure out the best way to paddle, but eventually we made it to the other end. we then spent the afternoon sunbaking, jumping off the boat to cool down in the beautifuly cool water, watching the paragliders circle the mountains,  listening to music or enjoying the silence. all the time, admiring the snowy peaks of the annapura range that loomed above the surrounding mountains. it felt amazing to be swimming and sunbaking in sight of snowy peaks.

the rest of the week was spent just taking it easy and enjoying good street food. one day we hired bikes and rode out to a nearby lake, which was very quiet and beautiful, but resulted in some horrendous sunburn - particualry for gary - and this was with the spf 30 suncream! so then that resulted in a day or two of doing very little, being in pain at most movements - and this is meant to be monsoon season! perople we had met had warned us that all it would do in pokhara is rain, but the weather had been almost perfect. sometimes it would rain in the evening or morning, then clear up for a beautiful day with blue skies and only a few fluffy white clouds. if anything it was a bit too hot at times...
after a week though we decided that it was time to move on and see new places, cassy decided that she wasnt ready to move on yet so she decided to stay and perhaps do the 10 day vipasana meditation course. Gary and I thought of going to lumbini for a visit, but decided instead to head back to kathmandu one last time to pick up some mail from home and pay the orphanage one last visit, then head east and back into india, up to darjeeling in the mountains.

so we arrived back in kathmandu and arranged to catch the overnight bus to the indian border the following afternoon. howver the next morning as we were reading the paper over breakfast we learnt of a indefinate strike that had been called in the whole darjeeling area. all tourists and non locals had been given until noon that day to leave, and after that there would be no transport and nothing open and nobody knew when it would open again. however anyone we asked about the situation seemed to know nothing, so we decided to chance it and see what would happen in the end...

so we departed kathmandu (about an hour late) for our trip that was scheduled to take 18 hours. only to mkae it 10 min down the road before we stopped so that the gearbox could be repaired - a great start to a long bus trip! but from then on things improved and the driver seemed to be trying to make up for all the lost time, throwing the bus round the tight mountain corners. all that you could do was to close your eyes and hope there wasnt another bus coming the other way. everything was going well until about midnight, when suddenly the bus stopped, pulling over to join a long que of buses parked along the side of the road. immediatley it didnt look good and my heart began to sink - it looked like one of the man many bandhs (strikes) that plauge nepal. it seems almost anyone can call a bandh for any reason and place large rocks on the road, blocking the only east - west highway in the country for however long they deem appropriate. meanwhile the police just stand about, doing nothing.
after most people got off the bus, my fears were confirmed. i was told that up ahead was a bandh and the rumors were that they would not move until sunrise - another 5 hours at least. so with that, we realised there was little to do but pass the time. the line of buses and trucks quickly grew along one side of the road while people wandered about in the darkness on the other. every so often a motoribe, ambulance or police car would pass, but other than that the road was silent. i was told from another couple who had been trapped before that they had once walked about one and a half hours to reach the point where the strike was from their bus.
As gary kept sleeping on the bus, i decided it was a bit too cramped and warm inside so i clambered up to my favourite spot on the roof and lay there he not so comfortable metal bars, listening to my ipod and staring at the clear stars, enjoying the cool light night breeze. unfortunatley i was not the only person with that plan. although the only other person up there at first was the driver making the most of a chance for a nap, it soon became crowded, with some people talking, and another (laying next to me of course) who drifted off to sleep and began to snore so loud the roof of the bus was vibrating.

however after only one hour (not long after a few trucks of armed soldiers passed in fact) there was a sudden flurry of activity ahead, people were running down the road and engines were being fired up. there was a quick scramble down off the roof before the bus lurched off again, this time in a mad rush to get ahead of everyone else. the driver must have been clinicly insade, tearing down the wrong side of the road, swinging the wheel from side to side, causing the bus to surch all over the road as we sped past buses, cars, lorries and most worrying of all... petrol tankers. after a few concerned shouts from passengers he seemed to settle down to a more acceptable speed. although it felt like we were again on the move, something seemed wrong. I soon realised what it was - there was still no traffic coming the other way. soon we stopped again. for the next 2 hours this process repeated it'self until finally traffic began to pass us non stop in the other direction. by 3am we finally seemed to be on our way and clear of any strike or traffic related trouble.

on and on the bus continued, until at about 11am we noticed that there was only a short distance to go. we were amazed that despite all the setbacks we were somehow still on schedule. we soon finally arrived at the indian border under an hour late!

this put us in a good mood and we felt ready to give india a second chance to impress us, after leaving us a little dissapointed the first time round. things strted well. the border crossing was fairly easy and we shared a interesting jeep ride into siliguri. instantly we were suprised to find how much wealthier and developed india seemed in comparison to nepal.

however once we arrived and once again started having to deal with india, we quickly became sick of it. it turned out that there was no possible way to darjeeling, gantok in sikkhim or anywhere in the mountainous north we wanted to go. even if we found transport going that way, there would be roadblocks and nothing would be open. we resigned ourselves to getting a room for the night and coming up with a plan. within the hour it turned out that plan would be to change our flights to sunday (5 days from now) and head down to calcutta for a few final days in india. there was nothing else we were egar to see or do and the pospect of arriving in thailand early was far too apealing.
it was 4pm when we went to book a sleeper bus to calcutta for the following night. then we discovered that they left every day at 6pm. there would be one 2 hours from now, and realising we had already drained siliguru of it's attractions we decided to go then and there. enough time to pack our bags and have a quick meal.

so we arrived in calcutta early the following morning, with 4 days left in india. the first was spent doing very little. wandering round the quiet streets of early morning, waiting to check in and then sleeping after 2 nights on sleeper buses. for the first time in india the place i was stayin in seemed to be full of other backpackers so it was a nice change to be able to meet and chat to other people, leading to a bit of a drinking session that night - leading to another day of doing very little as we were'nt feeling up to it. we were then told that there was going to be a large stike the following day and that everything would be closed! we had quickly gone down from 4 days to one one day to do anything.
that night we headed to the movies to have a bit of a quiet night. the only movie showing was transformers which wasnt that great, but the experience was entertaining, especially when the projecteer light kept dying and the audience had to shout to get the attention of the man so he would start bashing it to work again.. and dodging the drips of water from the air conditioning.

the next day the stike was happening and we were warned not to leave the area as it could be dangerous. but we decided it was now or never, and staying in a group we headed out into the streets to find it amazingly calm and traffic free. it was the perfect way to walk about the city. everyone was washing or relaxing and we could stroll down the middle of normally crowded streets. we visited mother teresa's mission and her grave. as i sat in the courtyard i could hear the clattering of manual typewriters coming from the windows above - a sound i have not hard for many years.

afterwards we paid a quick visit to the colonial era park st cemetary where we were chased out by the mosquitos, before heading to the victoria monument where the ticket men must have been on strike and we got in for free. it seemed that even the beggars seemed to be on strike as there were so few of them about.
we soon realised that we had just about exhausted our options for things to do on a strike day and we headed back to the hostel, where we drank a few beers bought by waving our cash through the security shutters of the local off license and having him pass them through the gate as so not to appear open on strike day.

the next day reading the papers we learnt that there had been a few scenes of violence throughout the city in some areas and people had been stuck at airports and train stations for over 12 hours. we had been lucky as the worst we had seen was a few buses loaded up with riot gear and a few sleepy policemen. although im not sure what to make of the local paramedicis renting out their ambulances as taxis for thousands of rupees to stranded airport passengers - as ambulences were the only cars allowed to pass!

So now tonight is out last night in india, and fittingly there was a blackout moments ago. if there has been one thing i have learnt in the past 2 and a half months..... always write long emails or blogs in gmail. thank god for autosave!

thailand here we come.....