Diversion
The most this morning seemed stronger than ever, and our taxi was giving me a few morning HR spikes with his overtaking manoeuvres in just 5-10m visibility. I'm getting used to it though, and he was kind enough to take us straight to the Nepali Immigration office which may otherwise have been hard to find. Here, we were stamped out of Nepal, and after an extremely thorough bag search (the guy seemed very amused by the spare loo roll and 5 litres of water we happened to have in our bags) we walked through the border to the Indian side of Sonauli.
For some reason this immediately felt a tad less friendly, as we were approached for buses, taxis and tutus whilst we walked to the Indian Immigration Office. We were directed 500 m down the road, which seemed a bit odd but turned out to be correct. I filled in the forms and before long we were stamped back into India (after our earlier unexpected trip to Delhi). I heard someone ask the couple behind me in the queue where they were from, and when they replied "Russian" he simply said "Good luck!".
We haggled for a tuktuk, and this took us to Nautanwa, a filthy, horrible village that happened to have a train station in it. We had discovered the day before quite by accident that our train was being diverted at a town 100km from our destination (very helpful!) so awaited the train at Nautanwa knowing we faced a long journey ahead!
The train itself left 30 mins late, and was formed of 14 or so sleeper (3rd non AC) carriages, a 3rd class AC sleeper and a 2nd class AC sleeper. Our seats were in the latter, and we were lucky enough to have the whole of our cabin (normally 4 people) to ourselves. I enjoyed the passing views of flat farmland and village life, as well as finishing my second book.
On arrival at Mau (pronounced "mow" we had a 2 hr wait until the next train to Varanasi. Here we risked a couple of samosas, having not really eaten all day (it was 18:00), and swatted some mosquitoes until our train arrived. This was not a service we had booked on, and consisted only of "CC" class carriages. I am not sure what this stands for, but I would perhaps describe it as "Cattle Class"...
Our section of carriage was alive with noises, varying from children crying, to a man watching a very gory film loudly in his phone, to regular burping, spitting and snoring. Lovely. A very helpful man did help us find some seats (or just squash others up) but needless to say we were glad to reach Varanasi at 22:00!
Varanasi. Wow. When I said earlier that Delhi had thankfully underwhelmed in terms of smells and bells, Varanasi was the complete opposite. I was hit by the stench of the city, driving, then walking, past piles of rubbish, dung as well as many people urinating. Very forlorn looking cows were grazing on the rubbish, whilst simultaneously excreting (quite a maze to walk through), dogs were eating dead dogs, mice were scurrying around, all fairly harrowing to witness.
This probably comes across as a slightly scathing review but having spent 15 hours travelling did not catch me at my most open-minded. Varanasi made Nepal seem clean, chilled, safe and friendly in comparison - here in India the horns were louder, stares more intense and motorbike drivers were no longer helmet-clad as they had been. I guess a city in the dark is often not at its best, but Varanasi has a lot to live up to tomorrow if it is to meet the Lonely Planet's description of "pulsing, vibrant and spiritual"....
The most this morning seemed stronger than ever, and our taxi was giving me a few morning HR spikes with his overtaking manoeuvres in just 5-10m visibility. I'm getting used to it though, and he was kind enough to take us straight to the Nepali Immigration office which may otherwise have been hard to find. Here, we were stamped out of Nepal, and after an extremely thorough bag search (the guy seemed very amused by the spare loo roll and 5 litres of water we happened to have in our bags) we walked through the border to the Indian side of Sonauli.
For some reason this immediately felt a tad less friendly, as we were approached for buses, taxis and tutus whilst we walked to the Indian Immigration Office. We were directed 500 m down the road, which seemed a bit odd but turned out to be correct. I filled in the forms and before long we were stamped back into India (after our earlier unexpected trip to Delhi). I heard someone ask the couple behind me in the queue where they were from, and when they replied "Russian" he simply said "Good luck!".
We haggled for a tuktuk, and this took us to Nautanwa, a filthy, horrible village that happened to have a train station in it. We had discovered the day before quite by accident that our train was being diverted at a town 100km from our destination (very helpful!) so awaited the train at Nautanwa knowing we faced a long journey ahead!
The train itself left 30 mins late, and was formed of 14 or so sleeper (3rd non AC) carriages, a 3rd class AC sleeper and a 2nd class AC sleeper. Our seats were in the latter, and we were lucky enough to have the whole of our cabin (normally 4 people) to ourselves. I enjoyed the passing views of flat farmland and village life, as well as finishing my second book.
On arrival at Mau (pronounced "mow" we had a 2 hr wait until the next train to Varanasi. Here we risked a couple of samosas, having not really eaten all day (it was 18:00), and swatted some mosquitoes until our train arrived. This was not a service we had booked on, and consisted only of "CC" class carriages. I am not sure what this stands for, but I would perhaps describe it as "Cattle Class"...
Our section of carriage was alive with noises, varying from children crying, to a man watching a very gory film loudly in his phone, to regular burping, spitting and snoring. Lovely. A very helpful man did help us find some seats (or just squash others up) but needless to say we were glad to reach Varanasi at 22:00!
Varanasi. Wow. When I said earlier that Delhi had thankfully underwhelmed in terms of smells and bells, Varanasi was the complete opposite. I was hit by the stench of the city, driving, then walking, past piles of rubbish, dung as well as many people urinating. Very forlorn looking cows were grazing on the rubbish, whilst simultaneously excreting (quite a maze to walk through), dogs were eating dead dogs, mice were scurrying around, all fairly harrowing to witness.
This probably comes across as a slightly scathing review but having spent 15 hours travelling did not catch me at my most open-minded. Varanasi made Nepal seem clean, chilled, safe and friendly in comparison - here in India the horns were louder, stares more intense and motorbike drivers were no longer helmet-clad as they had been. I guess a city in the dark is often not at its best, but Varanasi has a lot to live up to tomorrow if it is to meet the Lonely Planet's description of "pulsing, vibrant and spiritual"....
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