Heading South

It seems like its been a long time since I've posted, maybe because a lot has happened over the last week or so. We left Nepal last Friday on a crazy bus ride through the mountains. When we were about 25 miles to the border to India the driver suddenly stopped in a tiny town and told us that he couldn't drive us anymore due to a strike in the border town. We were a bit worried but a nice Nepali women who was also going to the same place as us helped us hire a horse cart and we made it to the border through the back streets to avoid the strike. It was also on this bus ride that I unfortunately left my bag unlocked and had some stuff stolen including my phone and some clothes which was too bad. We then stayed in quite possibly the worst hotel I've ever stayed in on the Indian side of the border which resulted in me getting hundreds of mosquito bites on my face and arms in the night even with mosquito coils. Over all it was a bit of a stressful day. Luckily the bites have now mostly faded away so I no longer look like i have some crazy skin problem.

We took a night train to Calcutta for a few days any then another night train to Madras. Calcutta is pretty cool for such a big city. It was the British capital and it still have somewhat of a western feel or at least more then some of the other big cities. People actually follow the traffic lights, its crazyness. We went to the Indian Museum while we were there which has a very strange assortment of collections, all which are covered with dust and look like then haven't changed since the '60s or so. We also when to the botanical gardens which has the worlds largest banyan tree, its quite large. Also the food was excellent there, they have Bengali food which is a bit different. Then train to Madras was 27 hours long, which is really long, but it wasn't actually to bad. We paid more for the air conditioned sleeper car which was nice, they give you pillow and sheets and everything. After arriving at 4am we decided that we didn't really want to do another big city so we caught a bus right a way to Mahabalipuram which is about 2 hours south. Its a nice little touristy town know for its stone carvings and temples. We had a great swim in the ocean before we left. Now we are in Pondicherry in a cute little internet cafe which has the best coffee i've had in a very long time. Pondicherry was a french colony and is very different from the other parts of india we have been so far, there are still many westerners living here. We even went out to a bar last night and got Mojitos, haha, which i defiantly didn't expect to do in india! The only problem is its sooo hot and humid, but thats not going to change anytime soon so i guess i will just have to get used to it. We head to Madurai on the night bus tonight and are planning on staying at least long enough to wash our clothes haha.