Kathmandu, Nepal to Gorakpur, India

LEAVING THE ROCK BEHIND
For the past month or more I've been travelling with Ross Sendall from Australia. Nicknamed 'Rock' for his reliability, he has been a joy to travel with. Since January I've been lucky to have spent some quality time with D'Arcy in Burma, Beppe briefly in India and now Rock. It's great to be able to travel around this planet and see what it has to offer but it's hard when you build such good friendships and leave prematurely. Hopefully one day I will see each of them again but whatever happens they are a part of this trip and part of the memories I will take with me forever.

VOLLEYBALL AND BUS SEATS
My seat on the overnight bus from Kathmandu to the Indian border wasn't connected to the floor properly so every time the driver braked or changed gears I was thrown into the back of the seat in front of me. During the course of the night this happened about six and a half thousand times so I arrived in Sanauli at 6am feeling like I'd just done a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson. I got used to the seat thing after a while but I never got used to the guy next to me with the rubberneck who tried to use my shoulder a pillow all night. We didn't get along very well because every time he snuggled in for the night I used his head like a volleyball and sent it back over the imaginary net running between our seats with the pointy part of my shoulder. I'm not sure which of us looked worse when we stepped off the bus but I won the volleyball match. As bad as I felt though I knew that this was only the start of a very long journey back into the heart of India. I was determined to make Agra by tomorrow morning, no matter what it took. During the journey my thoughts often drifted to my brother and sister-in-law, Jeff and Julie, travelling in Japan. While I was enduring the seat that wouldn't keep still they were probably hurtling across the countryside in the bullet train, fully reclined sipping tea and eating sushi. I wasn't bitter at all.

I threw down some breakfast and retraced my steps of a month earlier back past the Nepal exit/entry booth, over the imaginary line into India and up to the immigration desk. "New Zealand. We beat you in the Cricket World Cup." The officer said thumbing through my passport, stopping when he found the Indian visa. "Yes I know. How did you go against Australia in the final?" I asked, knowing that India had been well beaten by a better team. I shouldn't of asked because we spent the next 20 minutes talking about the Indian team, who I liked and didn't like, the coach, the captain - it went on and on. I was too tired for this but eventually I got my passport back and stumbled onto a bus headed for Gorakpur, about 100km south of the border, and argued briefly with the luggage man about an imaginary charge for my backpack.