Varinasi!

After leaving Ghazipur we followed the main road to Varanasi. Once we got a glimpse of the Ganges we road down towards it and found we had ridden into an area where they do funerals, and there was one going on at the time. A big fire was going and they had brought down a body wrapped in shiny fabrics but we didn't see them actually burn the body. There was a lot of discussion and the body was put on a boat, but that's all we saw. It was very hot just standing there and we had attracted a crowd of locals who were there for the funeral who wanted to talk to us. Seemed odd that they were more interested in us than the funeral (we are funny looking). I spoke to one guy for a bit and he said it was his brothers wife that had died. I also noticed at the time that there were no females here and I tried to ask why that was but he didn't understand me. All the people there were from the one village nearby though. We set off again after that though.

Varanasi has a whole extra level of nuts traffic. It's still flows, but there are cars and bikes and horns everywhere. Luckily in the places we've been so far in India the towns are quite compact so you don't have to ride far into the mess, but it does take a while to make progress.

I've noticed they don't use mirrors in India. On bikes they are ether folded inwards or removed, and on cars they are folded in. I think this is the reason for the horn use, but they can be very loud. The entire population must have hearing damage.

Once we got into Varanasi we headed towards the railway station where there should be a good lot of hotels with parking for the bikes. On the way into this area we went on this overpass that had relatively light traffic, but on the overpass was a naked guy just smiling at all the traffic going past... I almost crashed from laughing.

We found a street filled with hotels and had a look at a few. The best seemed to be 850r/night ($17AU) with aircon, tv, and bathroom. We kept looking though because we were both in desperate need of wifi and I was still iffy from Nepal with headaches and lack of sleep. We found an internet cafe and checked to see what wikitravel was saying. I jumped on Agoda and had a look at places, and we found one that was $30/night, with wifi, and very comfortable looking... Yes, that will do nicely! We didn't book online but went out to see if they'd give us the same rate, but it was 4500r/night at the hotel and 1500r/night on agoda and they wouldn't match that. So we found a nearby internet cafe and booked and then marched back with the booking voucher and we got in for the 1500r/night! Take that Zeeras Hotel! Now I have a room tiled with Marble floors, a shower that doesn't get the bathroom floor wet, and toilet, a sink that doesn't drain onto the floor, a tv, and a fridge, and the most comfortable bed I've had in a while!

Light traffic.

Note no mirrors. No helmet. High speeds.

Some kids that wanted me to take their photo. They rode off a way then came back and asked for 100 rupies. I countered with "I took your photo, you give me 100 rupies!", then they left.

The Wifi didn't work in the rooms however, so we had to sit in the lobby to use it. They had network points in the room but they didn't have cables, so we went on an adventure to find some. That took a lonnnggg time and visiting many shops because people didn't understand what we wanted (in a world of wifi, who uses network cable any more?). Eventually we stumbled upon a small computer shop that had some and we each bought a cable for $3 (wow, expensive, but totally worth it for precious precious internets). Once we got back to the hotel however we found the network ports didn't work of course. Typical. I complained about that and then a wifi access point appeared on this floor within a few hours. Now we had internet in the comfort of our air-conditioned rooms away from the 41degree heat outside! Success!

I'll have to go back to cheaper rooms after this however...

We found a Burger King while wandering around!

They even stole the logos!

The Burger King did not have any burgers for sale, just curries and rice. 

Down the road from the hotel is the biggest mall in Varanasi (still tiny, I still remember you Chadstone).   And in this mall was a McDonalds. MORE SUCCESS! We ate there twice in one day. It's OK, only chicken or vegetarian meals and very very slow service. The McChicken was the best, but like everything else in India the salt was piled onto the food. No wonder my blood pressure has gone up again. There's also a very noticeable class divide here too, inside the mall are well dressed indians, outside are the poorer class.

Touts are meant to be quite bad here too, but they're not up to Cambodian (Siem Reap) standards. The Tuk Tuk drivers will come up to you and go on a big spiel on the tours they can offer. They always try to get your business for tomorrow because most tourists say "not today" to get rid of them I guess. We've seen a few fighting in the street. One of them came up to Drew and said that another tuk tuk driver goes home and drinks every night, like that was a problem! I've found the best drivers to be the ones who aren't chewing the betle nut/leaves, easily recognisable because they don't have red gums and bad teeth.

When I had to get some more drugs we got a Tuk Tuk away from the hotel, and we were having trouble explaining exactly what we wanted ("Pharmacy" when we should have said "Medical Shop"), so some guy ran over and translated and then jumped in the Tuk Tuk and came with us. We joked and said "No silk shops! No shirts! Just medical shop!" and he assured us that we were just going to the medical shop, no where else. We went to the medical shop, got my drugs, then back in the tuk tuk just near the street where he jumped in he says "Oh you come have a look at my silk shop!". Of course. The driver seemed reluctant but we went in, had him show us everything, even the shirts he says that he makes but we've seen in other shops. We left not buying anything and then we were tout free back to the hotel.

Mr Silk Shop guy on the Left with non-betle nut chewing driver.

Another silk shop we ended up at thanks to a different tuk tuk driver.

The next afternoon we headed down to the Ganges to look at the ghats that line the river. There are a lot of them...

Panorama from Assi Ghat.

Cow just chilling out on the dirt.

These kids wanted us to take photos of them of course. The one in green picked which pocket I had my phone in of course...  I told them 10 rupies for a photo and they almost gave it to me, but then afterwards they wanted 10 rupies from me.

More Ghats.

Washing things in the cremated-body faecal-matter filled Ganges.

Ganges photo of the year.

Another Ghat.

Janki Ghat, like it says there in the yellow square.

A couple of cricket games going on in front of one of the ghats.

Not sure what the guy on the right is saying...

Corner of a ghat.

General view of the river.

Interesting ghat/building. In front of this they did cremations, not when we went past though.

Wood ready for the cremations.

I don't think I have any shooz :(

Steps!

Swimming everywhere.

Manual drill, Hadn't seen one before, asked if we could take a photo of him using it and he was OK with that.

Drew repairing Indian-Australian relations.

The photo I wanted, the guy on the phone got angry and said no photos, I assured him I was just taking a photo of thing above his head. Ha!

The small alleys away from the river. No car horns.

There's a guy on the left of this photo contributing to all the urine stains in this area... Might have to burn my shoes in a ceremonial fire once I'm finished this trip.

Poeple sitting, lots of boats.

Looking north towards the sunken ghat and the bigger cremation area.

Red moon. Pondering.

The festival that happens at 7pm every sunday. Lots of bell ringing and flames.

All the tourists and locals in boats here to watch it from the water.

All the way along the river there are constantly people asking if you need a boat. We kept saying no, but like the Tuk Tuk drivers the would follow and explain what the did and how it's not something to be missed and trying to get us for sunrise tomorrow too. About halfway up the river I found the best tactic to deal with this is to look serious and say "Oh you need a boat? There's a guy just back there who's selling boat rides, check with him". They seemed to understood what I was saying and were confused as to why I was telling them this, but it stopped their spiel right away. It worked on the guys selling hash too, much to their confusion.

Here's a bit of the tuk tuk ride back from the river:

Today the task is to get to Allahabad, 120km up the road. I think it's possible, but it's a long way out of this air-conditioned room with working toilet...

Clips from the road to Jomsom

Some clips all fancily edited together from riding through the mountains. The transitions are bad, I still have to learn how to use this software but you need power and internet which are in short supply here!

I saw in the news today that there was a flash flood triggered by an avalanche along this road.

Intro to India

The morning after viewing Bhuddhas birthplace we got up and had breakfast (at 3 foxes again), and then headed towards the border with India.

Parked at the guesthouse. I almost ripped off one of their doors getting out of there...

On the Nepal side finding immigration was easy, we got our passports stamped. Then the process of finding out what to do with carnets for the bikes... In the immigration office they pointed us to the building nextdoor which was the tourist info center, we got in there and a lady got up and went to get someone else for us. When that person got there they didn't know what the carnet was for, so we asked where customs was, which took them a while to explain...

We left the bikes at immigration and went to the "Customs Agent" office, first at the help desk door, where they told us to go to the next door, and then we were directed to an office next to it with lots of people sitting around. At first they told us we had to go to immigration and get the stamp, and I explained multiple times that we already had and eventually they believed us once they saw the stamp in the Athe carnets around but they all just kind of sat and didn't do much. Eventually someone arrived who was the carnet expert, they informed us we had to have photocopies of the passport, and that we should bring the bikes over to customs... We set off back inside Nepal (note: you can wander ANYWHERE on land borders) to go to the green building with a photocopier, got our copies, and then went back to customs with the bikes. The carnet expert got us to fill in the book with the details, and then he started stamping, and then he said we had to run and follow him to the customs office (what?) before they went on lunch. We walked through a field of trucks to get there, and it was a long slient process to gain a signature on each carnet, then back out to the bikes to make sure they'd signed the right thing. This would be the slowest carnet processing I'd have seen for at least the next hour of my life...

INDIA!

Immediatly the border is more crazy than Nepal. There are shops scattered everywhere right up to the official border, in the middle are two small shopfronts for immigration and customs. After fighting the traffic which seemed to go everywhere here we got to Immigration were we filled in an entry form, got our visas stamped, and filled in the carnet details in a small notebook. This wasn't customs so I figured there would be a lot of double entry for carnet details.

Then it was time for customs. We had to travel back up the road slightly and get across with the bikes. However, while we were at immigration the Nepali side of the border went to lunch, this left a long line of trucks up the road. And because there was a long line of trucks everyone in cars decided to use half the other lane to get up the side of the trucks, and then because all the cars had almost blocked the lanes then all the bikes came up and filled in the rest of the space available. All I had to do was get through a small gap over to the customs office, Drew could fit on the vespa, but my bike was too wide. Then the police started telling people to reverse to get out of the way of a truck going into india, so I had to get off the road and let some traffic pass for a while.

I was stuck here for ages. Customs was below the red sign on the left, the big orange truck was blocked by a car...

Eventually there was a small gap between the southbound traffic, the northbound cars, and the trucks and I made it across! What an effort, it was like frogger but much more annoying and without the spare lives. Inside customs we had another introduction to indian efficiancy. First, you go inside with your carnet, where some guy fills all the details into a book and fills in half the carnet information, and then stamps some of it. Then you go outside to the big customs cheif I guess, where he signs it and the carnet is handed back.

All up I think it took us 3 hours at the border.

After we got away from the border area and the long lines of parked trucks the road queitened down and finally, finnnnnaallllyy, I was on a straight semi-flat road where you could keep some speed up. There were some cars/trucks pushing you out the lane, but nothing to mean yet. This was the most enjoyable part of India so far! Hopefully between towns elsewhere It's like this. We stopped at a small shop where the owner was very friendly, we attacted a small crowd who looked at the bikes. And we got to see quite a few chickens killed...

We got to Gorakphur, which is a town of 600000 people but it's very compact. The traffic and buildings don't really pick up until you get close. Then of course it gets nuts. We stayed in a hotel that seems to be filled with lots of business travellers, and some very grumpy staff. At first there was a problem with where to park the bikes, a serious problem. I've no idea why. They told me to park in one spot (Where I couldn't open my luggage) then I was told to move it to another spot, but apparently that was ever so slightly in the wrong spot so I had to move forward again, we kept asking to verify where exactly they wanted us to move, but each time they would tell us to go somewhere, and then say that was wrong and we had to move it again... Wow. How hard can parking be? As Drew noted they were precious about where to put these vehicles, but garbage can go anywhere in the parking area, anywhere you like (I helped contribute too).

The floor numbering in this hotel has yet another system for yet another country. This time we have a ground floor (which is unnamed), then 1st floor with rooms 001 to 010, then 2nd floor with rooms 101 to 110, then 3rd floor with rooms 201 to 210... I was quite confused when trying to find my room (208) on the second floor...

That night we headed past all the street resturants next to the drains filled with sewage (it smelt like it whatever it was). Touts zeroed in on us pretty quick, asking us to come to their resturant. Eventually one from Hotel Sunrise found us, they had a rooftop resturant which was away from the street at least. We went up there to have a look and stayed anyway.

Food is cheap here! I had vege kofta (there's not a huge amount of power to keep meat cold here) with 4 chappatis for about $1.05, and it was really good. Beer is slightly expensive at $3.10 for a 650mL bottle. Bottled water is about 20c/L.

Gorakphur at street level...

From the rooftop restaurant at Hotel Sunrise. What a noisy mess. The railway is big building in the back.

Looking the other way.

The next morning we ate breakfast at our hotel (Paneer and Aloo Parathras, very good!) and noticed the  tout that got us into Hotel Sunrise for dinner the night before was also working in this hotel! We asked him and he works two jobs, morning to afternoon at one, then goes to the other to work into the night.

Then it was time to set off towards Varanassi! It was 200km from Gorakphur.

This cable was powering a drill. It had several taped together sections and it took a bit of jiggling about to get working.

However... About 40km in we hit a very rough patch of road which broke the Vespa again. The rear suspension had broken again so we headed to the nearest bike shop and they got to repairing it right away...

Removing the fuel tank to get at the top of the suspension for re-welding.

 There are a lot of Vespas in India so they're used to working on them.

The offending part (the round object). The top nut on the suspension had gone through this, it held the spring down.

It was off to the nearby welding shop to get the shock welded up, and the body work welded for more strength.

Sleeping Vespa.

Welding safety in India.

Rubbish by the side of the road.

Goat eating the rubbish.

Trying to pay for what they did. The mechanic didn't want to take any money. I think the total ended up around $20 for all the work and welding, but the money had to be forced on the guy!

Since we had a delay during the day once we got riding again we would try to find a hotel on the way to Varanasi. Unfortunately there isn't a lot of choice. Since neither of us know what the local word for Hotel looks like we may have past a lot of them. We found one that looked shiny and new but they told us they were full (which may not be true...).

We got to Ghazipur and started asking around for hotels, and they were all directing us towards the train station (which is where you find them I guess). We found one fancy looking place and checked the price, $12 for a fan cooled room. Excellent. It had a shower and western toilet, neither of which worked very well, but they were there at least.

We think we were one of the first westerners to stay there. The manager wanted to make sure we were happy with everything in his own Indian way, when we got luggage off the bike they refused to let us take bags and had someone follow us around everywhere. A bit tiring and we don't need it, but hey, they had staff members almost pouring out of the place and they needed to do something.

According to the manager a lot of the hotels would have told us that they were full because we were foreigners and they wouldn't want to do the paperwork that the police required. Well that's the first time I've run into that. But they kept our passports and kept asking questions all night, eventually we had to sign a form in triplicate that had a space for our Indian address on it, which we didn't have. Very confusing, but I think the form was for business travellers and not for tourists. Who knows, maybe there will be issues when leaving India now.

Of course, then there was the problem of where to park the bikes. First they opened up this small door and told me to ride in there. I pointed out that my bike was in fact wider than the door, and there was a lot of thinking but eventually I said I wouldn't bother and I'd just park on the street, but then they found a gate and opened it and I parked in there. No idea if it was part of the hotel or not. Drew got to park the Vespa in a small hallway... somehow. They did give us a 101% guarantee that our bikes would be safe.

In the morning when I got my bike out I found switches had been played with, and the trip meter reset, and then I noted there were two kids in the yard where I parked. At least all my fuel was still there.

The road to the train station in Ghazipur.

Next time, Varanasi, and Touts.

Lumbini

Updaing where I've been. I would have thought Internet access was a little more freely available in India but it's been hard to get somewhere where I can get the laptop online.

So the first part of the last week or so is, Lumbini!

Drew and I set off from Pokhara late morning, attemping to get to Tansen that night. Only 120km to cover... However 5km into the trip drew started to have problems with his bikes suspension. He pulled over and said it was probably broken again... So the Vespa was pushed onto its side, the and the old suspension removed. Then, he produces his spare suspension... I'll also noted he was carrying a spare wheel, and another spare tyre. Lucky he had the spare suspension.

For the rest of the day it was lots of riding through valleys again, semi-decent roads (better than Kathmandu-Pokhara). And then racing the sunset up to Tansen.

The landscape changed a few times. Pokhara is very green, the roads winding up and down the hills outside of town. Then you get into a dryer part of the land, more rocks, but more impressive valleys. At one point the road dipped down to the river about 20km out of Tansen, there was a nice little town there and it would have been good to stay but the accommodation options were somewhat, limited. We pushed on to Tansen at the top of the range overlooking the plains to the south where everything got a lot browner.

When in Tansen we just followed the signs to one hotel, no idea what it would be like. Once we arrived we found a moderatly fancy hotel (to my lowered standards anyway) but they were charging $30US/night for a room. Far too much. He offered 20% discount at first, then we were about to leave and he then offered 50% discount. That's more like it! There were meant to be views from the hotel but the air is still full of dust still.

The view from the hotel in Tansen

A temple in Tansen, we found it while trying to navigate out of the town.

A carving on the temple.

Please, shoes, belt, hear...

In the morning we set off again, this time the goal was Lumbini, the birthplace of Bhudda, and next to the border with India.

When leaving Tansen drew let me know he needed petrol, so we headed down the road a bit, found a petrol station but they were out of fuel. We tried asking them where the closest fuel was, and they pointed back up the hill to Tansen. Right. We went back into Tansen, found an ATM (one of the requirements for the morning) and then asked around for fuel. We eventually stumbled on the place everyone mentioned, but they were also out of fuel. Drew asked around some more and got some confusing responses about a petrol pump a little higher up the road. We road up, couldn't see one, asked again and they said it was back down the road a way... When we were riding back we saw the pump hidden behind a building. We filled up and then were set off from Tansen for the second time today. And wouldn't you know it, at the bottom of the hill not much further was another petrol station with fuel...

Another of them valleys.

A river running away from the road.

Awesome bike, and a little red Vespa that made it this far.

The valleys were impressive again, then once we got to Butwal where the plains started the traffic increased A LOT. Cows, goats, kids, cars, bikes, trucks, more cows, more bikes, everywhere. We had to dodge a lot of traffic on the straight road. I was getting tired (still sick sort of), and then we hit a small town where we had to turn off to Lumbini. The traffic there was even worse, smaller roads, more animals, bikes. Once out of it though the road settled down until Lumbini.

We picked a place to stay that I'd recognised the name from Wikitravel, I'd already traded in the lonely planet for Nepal. At first the water didn't work (they needed the generator on to power the pump to get water in the tanks on the roof), and then there was water over the floor in the room, and it was noisey, and I got to listen to someone throwing up all night.

The next day we set off to have a look at Buddhas birthplace. On the way in someone called out to us to buy a ticket, but I guess we thought it was a scam, but once we got to the main temple (a long walk through the heat) they asked for our tickets, which we couldn't produce... After some discussing and shoe removal we eventually got ourselves in without tickets.

Monasteries in the towards the northern part of the park.

A temple close to the birthplace.

That's how you carry stuff.

There are old ruins scattered around this area but with the dates marked on them I'm not sure how the old ruins can look so new. Compared to Angkor Wat or the temples in Ayuttha these old ruins looked like brand new bricks but were at least another 1000 years old according to the signs.

In the middle of this section is a white building which was built by a Japanese engineer to help preserve the temple around the spot where buddha was born. When we were in we got in line and waited to see the market stone which is under bullet proof glass in the center of this building. And yes, it was there, it was stone. There were police there, and lots of people who were there for religious reasons, and us two tourists to have a peek at this rock.

A quote.

Some of the disturbingly new looking ruins...

More ruins.

The temple that was built over the old ruins of the birthplace.

Outside of the temple is a tree around 20 meters away, confusingly this tree is also where bhudda was born. So who knows where the exact spot is...

The tree that Buddha was also born under...

Not sure what this was for. But the ground was hot here.

After a hot day in the sun it was back over to 3 Fox's restaurant where we got chatting to some other people who had met the two Canadians I met back in Kathmandu. Everyone keeps running into everyone else in these places.

Next story time: Crossing to India and not dying!