It’s been a long journey, but we made it to Nepal. On the 23^rd, we flew from Male to Trivandrum, where we caught an overnight train to Chennai. We hung out with Krishna, one of our California friends currently volunteering in India, who gave us a place to stay and took us around. See Joylani’s post for more on Chennai. Then on the 26^th, we flew from Chennai to Delhi. Although living on a train for a couple days seemed fine to me, I heeded my parents’ advice to “spend the money” necessary to make my wife happy. Anyways, after our flight and a day in Delhi, we did have to get on another train bound for Gorakhpur, in UP. Although it left pretty close to on-time, we arrived in Gorakhpur a few hours late. From the train station, we shared a jeep with a Nepali family to the border. So on the 27^th, we crossed the border from Sunauli (India) to Belahiya (Nepal), spent the night there, and this morning took a bus to Pokhara.

To summarize, our past week has taken us from the Indian Ocean to Himalayas. Two flights, two overnight trains, two nights hanging out with friends, and two border crossings is all it took to get from the Maldives to Nepal in a week. This isn’t to mention the two times we witnessed our drivers getting hassled by the corrupt Indian cops and having to pay bribes (once our rickshaw driver in Delhi and once our jeep driver from Gorakhpur to the Sonauli border), which Joylani was astonished to see. Like I began this post saying, “it’s been a long journey.”