Trains, Planes, and Automobiles.

Everyone we've met in Nepal has been extremely helpful, with the exception of our driver. We booked seats in a jeep(along with 10 other people, but we rode shotgun) from Kathmandu to the Indian Frontier. We went on tiny one-lane(one and a half maybe) roads through the mountains, and saw some beautiful countryside. We stopped in a nothing town about 25 miles from the border, and the driver, who didn't really speak any English just unloaded everyone's bags and took off without a word to anyone that I could see. Apparently a general strike had been called all across the lowland provinces(apparently some rather tense negotiations are taking place regarding the new constitution, prime minister, etc.). No motorized traffic would be allowed on the roads. Luckily one of our fellow travellers spoke a bit of English and attempted to explain it to us. She also hired a horse cart to take the three of us across the border. The only motor traffic we saw were a number of ambulances headed the other way. "Is it dangerous?" we asked. She said "Oh yes." and laughed. Actually we didn't see any strikers and our driver took a secret back route to avoid roadblocks. When we eventually found the immigration official in India he thought the whole thing was quite humourous. He also informed Sharada and me that by the time we got back, we would probably be married. "Travel 5-10 years, then you married. This is not allowed in my country." This sounded rather menacing given that it really was his country to let us in or not. He extracted a $2 bribe, possibly on accident.

The hotel on the border was fetid and Sharada received a mind boggling number of mosquito bites, which at least turned out not to be harbingers of dengue fever or leprosy. She also discovered someone had gone through her bag while on the roof of the jeep and removed some money, some clothes and her phone. It's been a rough few weeks for her. She must have looked crosseyed at a cow or turned away Lord Vishnu disguised as a beggar.

One short 20 hour train ride later we were in Calcutta(Kolkatta), which was not at all how Mother Theresa had lead me to believe. I'm sure there are some desperately poor people there, and it's rather dirty, but this is India. Compared to Dehli it sparkles. No doubt the British had something to do with this, but they've not kept up with the cleaning. It feels rather like a European city that has suffered a sudden loss of economic activity and civic government(although people do stop at stop lights almost all the time--imagine). We spent most of the time looking at gardens and totally out of place british building and eating Bengali food. On to Madras, well actually Mamallapuram(that's the shorter, modern name) instead. We got in to Madras so early that we had nothing to do but go to the bus station, so we basically
skipped the 4th largest city in India. India is better in small doses, I think. We're on the beach and there's a lot of palm trees and stucco and stray dogs and it feels a bit like Mexico, but with more giant stone monoliths of Shiva and Vishnu.