Goodbye India, Hello Nepal

Spent a couple more days in Dharmsala, mostly eating pizza at the same restaurant each night as my stomach doesn't seem to agree with the curry round here. Lucklily the hotel has film channels so spent a day watching those whilst recovering from another mistake of a curry...

Didn't do much else there, dodged downpours and wandered around, just chilled out and then moved onto Rishikesh which happened to have a religious festival on where a few million people dressed in bright orange wander through the town, over a big bridge and on to a temple in the mountains over the course of 10 days or so. Watched them over a pizza and then went over the bridge too. Couldn't really see what the fuss was about but they seemed to be enjoying it...

Had a go at yoga at a class one morning, not quite sure I got what all the ummmmmmm..ing was about but felt suitably stretched afterwards and really enjoyed the 10 minute lie down at the end to recover from the most strenuous excersise I had done in a long long time! To get over that I went for a massage, I think "comprehensive" is the word to use, nothing escaped the treatment!

Headed back to Chandigarh for a night on the way to Corbett National Park where we stayed in a fantastic luxury lodge and got up one morning to go tiger spotting in the park. Didn't see one unfortunately, not helped by the drivers deciding that half an hour spent in the car park would be a good plan. Saw an elephant in someones yard, didn't get a ride on one as it's the wrong season and nobody was doing tours on them. Oh well, I went and had another shower and enjoyed the air conditioning a bit more instead.

After that headed towards Nepal, where we waited for 3 hours in the sun for the border bridge to open, then were told to stay in the next town as the passport office was closed for the night. Hopes were raised when the pizza hut sign was seen on the hotel wall, but it turns out they just nick all the western logos to drag tourists in.

Early start in the monsoon rain saw us back at the passport office and allowed into the country properly, then we headed for a little village in the mountains for a day where we found a nice restaurant that served buffalo burgers amongst other things. Did big tubs of ice cream there too, brilliant!

Then moved on to Pokhara where I'm sitting now. It's a touristy activity town (and has a place that serves beef burgers and steaks!) so we went out last night and had the first night on vodka in nearly 3 weeks! My head still hurts now, and in some ways I'm glad that we can't go parascending as it's the wrong season and they've all gone on holiday, as I think my vision would probably be more spinny than it should... So a few of us hired a boat and paddled around a lake for a while in the sunshine, before we head out to try and arrange white water rafting for tomorrow.

Overall impressions are that Nepal is much more pleasant than India. It's cleaner, people don't just chuck all their rubbish in the road or wherever they fancy, it's not so humid, the people aren't all trying to get your money off you (although there are obviously a few exceptions) and we've been left to our own business rather than drawing a crowd everywhere. And the views when the clouds clear are spectacular, sat on the roof seats yesterday was just incredible. Only thing to watch out for are the protests against the new government who've screwed up slightly and there's no fuel anywhere (we have big fuel tanks so filled up in India so we won't need more), but they're not aimed at us so we just stay clear and let it blow over. Should be fun once we get into more of the adventure sports that are on offer here...