La Guru

With Buddah as our guide we flew in a rather dubious looking propellor plane over the mountains to the border with India.  The plane was very late and not supposed to fly at night for saftey reasons but thankfully they let us go with only 5 minutes to spare till pitch darkness set in.  When we arrived at the airport there were queues of people outside all in a long line singing and holding candles.  Never had we had this reception before, a huge video camera was thrust in my face, men with guns stood and stared and people were shouting things at me.  I hadn't a clue what as my ears were still ringing from the plane and the camera lights blinded me.  I tried to look for Davina McCall as it was real big brother mo' but suddenly my dreams evaporated, my huge rucksack was thrown at my head and i was shoved to the side as a man dressed in orange walked into the crowd and blessed each and every one.  He was a famous Guru man.

We took a taxi to the border and walked through almost passing immigration because all the lights were off.  A shout and a gun in my neck suggested we had arrived so we went through the rigmarole one more time - I now have no more pages left in my passport (:  The guy told us to get the bus at 8.30pm but 'whatever you do, don't get a taxi they are very dangerous!'.  We nodded and marched through to India - cows were everywhere, cars swerved to avoid them and people flocked to sell us oranges and inner tubes.  There were many taxi drivers offering to take us to Gorakhpur but no buses so we risked our lives and took one.

How many men can you fit into a Fiat Uno?  Answer: 8 - 4 in the front and 4 in the back - no joke!  We picked up waifs and strays along the way, each with a large suitcase as our taxi turned into a bus.  We arrived and booked into a grotty hotel and located the train station which was full of yet more wandering cows, millions of flies and families lying all over the place.  Noone knew what time the train was to Varanasi and we couldn't buy a ticket 'just because' so we went to bed exhausted.  The next morning we skipped breakfast (as a cow was in the restaurant outside licking the bowls) and jumped on a train to Varanasi.