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Nepal to Calcutta
 
NEPAL TO CALCUTTA Submit a Tale here | More Tales
And now we return to the Adventures in Asia

We were invited to a Nepalese Party called a "baby feeding" party. It's a party where they give the baby a name (similar to a christening) and everyone comes and puts flowers on the baby's face and feeds it. There were about 200 people there so the baby must have been pretty stuffed by the end but it was interesting to experience some real Nepalese culture.

Everyone was drinking raksi (alcohol) and pretty drunk. We left at around 12 midnight and tried walking through this maze of alleys in the rain and pitch dark, through mud and shit and puddles. (Cees was glad he didn't wear his sandles.)

We really didn't know how to get out of this neighborhood and what made it worse was there was this dangerous looking dog starting to bark at us and blocking an alley that we thought we had to walk down to get out.

Then the dog started to chase after us! We freaked out, ran to the nearest door and started pounding frantically for someone to save us!! A guy came out looking like he just woke up and was surprised to see a couple of foreigners in "that" part of town in the middle of the night.

Fortunately, he could understand our desperation so he escorted us (in his pyjamas and flip flops), over the mounds of shit, through barking dogs on to the street which led us home. People are very nice over here!!

The next day we left for Calcutta...and what an "interesting" experience that was!!

We had to take a B.B.B.R. (Butt Burning Bus Ride) for 12 hours over night. Fortunately they had a Hindi/Indian movie (a lot of hip gyrating, singing and dancing taking place in all different parts of the world but otherwise the plot didn't make any sense at all) which lasted 4 hours to entertain us!!

When we reached the border of Nepal/India at 4 am (in the pouring Monsoon rain), we were thankfully greeted at the bus by two Indian men in a two wheel horse drawn carriage. They got us on the buggy and we hung on for life not to get bumped out of it when it went over bumps. It took us to the border control where we had to wait outside for 3 hours because: "Man come 7 o'clock, you must wait!"

After all that, we got horse drawn driven and managed to stay on it until we got to the train station. There we were shuffled around from one counter to the next for a couple of hours until we finally got our train tickets to Calcutta. Unfortunately, everything was sold out so we had to buy a 3rd class "general" ticket. But they said we could change it on the train with the conductor.

NOT...!

All I can say to you now is NEVER take 3rd class on a train that is going to Calcutta in JUNE!!!

We got on a train that was delayed for three hours and had to take 3rd class from 11 am until 9 am THE NEXT MORNING!!!! The train was completely packed. I felt like we were on a cattle car stuffed with people to the point of overflowing. People were sitting on top on each other, kids were peeing on the floor, people were sleeping on the floor, we eventually had to sit/sleep on the floor too!!!

To top it all off Cees got an attack of diarrhoea that lasted the whole trip and has still not recovered from it. So unfortunately he had to visit the "toilet" (which was covered with shit and pee) on a regular basis.

His ideals of "Hygiene" are very jaded at this point.

All I can say is that we survived the trip, barely, and now we are recovering in a hotel in Calcutta. We took a shower for an hour to get rid of the caked sweat /dirt/pee smell.

Cees hasn't left the room for 15 hours except to visit the toilet. Tonight we are attempting another 12 hour train journey to Puri in order to see the world renowned "CAR FESTIVAL".

Today I am going with some Canadian Nurses (who have just got back from working for 2 months in a hospital in Bangladesh) to see Mother Teresa's Hospital. They told me Calcutta is paradise compared to Bangladesh.

Gotta go… and sorry if I'm always talking about the negative points because actually I'm still enjoying all the experiences.