And the adventure doesn't end there

Hey all,

After a 7 hour journey from Chitwan on a very hot and sticky bus we arrived in Kathmandu yesterday...how we longed for our rickshaw!!!!!!!!!!

It's been a funny few days since we left Pokhara.  We went white water rafting: something we all want to repeat but with more white water.  After the rafting we headed for Chitwan to resume our Tiger hunt but only saw a Rhino and Dave had a much needed bath with the Elephants. Chitwan was hot and considering they have been running these trips for years the whole thing was amusingly disorganised...with non existent transfers from the White Water Rafting and a guide with a broken down pickup truck we had to push start to get us to the park....gotta love Nepal!

We have two more nights in our rather nice hotel in Kathmandu (3 nights in the same hotel is luxury).  We have mooched around Durbar Square today (the Old part of Kathmandu) and watch the world go buy from a roof cop cafe over looking the square.  Shopping here is excellent and the women readers could spend literally days deciding on which colour pashmina they should buy....but at $4 you could buy them all.  Note: we haven't brought any but Dave has some rather bright trousers...some may say clowns trousers! ha ha!

 Food here is rather bloody good so any weight we lost in India is bound to pile back on

So what's left to do...tomorrow fly round Everest.  Friday morning fly to Delhi for a night/day there (to check out the Red Fort) then home for tea Saturday evening.

 THis is probably our last update...hopefully we have kept you reasonably entertained, I am sure the stories from the trip will be recalled for months to come.  We would again like to thank everyone that donated so generously to our rickshaw charities the whole trip has been brilliant but we are all starting to feel the burn now and looking forward to some home comforts.

 See you all soon

 Hobbit, Priest and Ninja Dave.

(pics still to follow...sorry!!!)

 

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Just crossed over the Ganges River

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day 7? Or maybe day 8? Due to doing touristy and mechanical stuff Sunday morning we didnt get on road until 2pm but it wasnt with out drama: Ran out of fuel while lost in the tiny hectic back streets of Fiozbad which drew a rather large crowd and brought the place to a stand still. Later on our travel buddies the Ozzy's had a small electrical fire! Then darkness fell and the small town we came across showed no sign of a hotel. While deciding if to drive on for another 2/3 hours two very nice police men stopped and offered us a Police escourt if we had a drink with them first...we couldn't really say no! :-) its Monday morning and we have 3 days to get to the Nepal boarder. We have decide to dumped Varanassi in favour of going off piste and tackle the small and probably undriveable back roads - carnage will probably ensue but it is supposed to be an adventure!

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day 6/7: After a short but fairly stressful drive we have made it to Agra - a major mile stone on our journey which means we are over half way already. Unfortunately for Hobbit 3 hours of stomach pains and vomiting on arrival kinda ruined the celebration for him but he's fighting fit today and we all got up at 5am to go see the sunrise at the Taj Mahal which was pretty spectacular. We now have a 2 day 400k drive down to Lucknow then 2 days to the boarder. Other news: the temperature is definatly rising the further north we get and Bob needs more mechanical TLC today.

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Day 6: Today has been long and quite frankly rather boring. The landscape has been very flat, playing chicken with lorrys got rather predictable and the lack of wildlife meant we moved from yesterdays game "identify the road kill" to the "who can spot the most overturned lorrys" game: total 6. We have tried hard to get to Agra today but Bobs exhauste is hanging off so stopped in Gwalior at the Central Park Plaza Hotel. Its about 5x the price we have been paying but we deserve it! We are off to see a massive fort tomorrow then a short(ish) drive to Agra to go see some big white building...the Taj Mahal or something? Come Sunday we have a relaxing 5 day drive to the Nepal boarder which will give up a chance to take in a national park and get off the big roads. Lovely!

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tarmac is a beautiful thing!

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Day 5 part 1: its been an interesting & alarming day. Interesting becaue we left the state of Maharashtra into farming country Madhya Pradesh (based on the amount of living and dead thing on all over the road). Its getting dryer which explains the 3 or 4 camel trains we saw today. Alarming because for no reason the road signs to Agra changed from 545k to 620k in the space of 2k...we are still scratching our heads about this but have to put it down to the fact that India is a crazy place and somethings are just unexplainable. For instance the toddler which it seems was being taught to roller stake next to the motorway while hanging off the back of a motorbike?!? And what looked like a headless human body laying on the road side (also seen by the 2 Ozzy boys we have been in convoy with since Goa). According to our mileometer we've done nearly 400k today but seeing as Agra got further away its possible the earths rotation sped up and we've only done 50?

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speeding through the Indian country side with Motorhead blasting out...it dont get much better than that! Team WWTD are in high spirits today in anticipation of reaching Agra the morning of day 7!! Tally ho, chocks away and full steam ahead! BRILLIANT! Loving India :-)