Our journey started in Varanasi. The 8 hour bus ride to the Nepal border took us through small villages with endless open air markets selling colorful decorations, christmas lights, candles, small ceramic plates to light candles in and many many sweets... all for the preperation of Divalli. Divalli is a light festival...Hindus clean their homes for days, put lights all around their house, buy new clothes and have the entire family if not town over for sweets.
By 5:45pm we were at the border and maid it just in time to go through indian customs which closes at 6pm...and then literally walked about 50 feet to nepal and got our visas on the spot. As the Nepalese immigration officer stamped my passport with a 2 month Nepal visa he looked up and said "welcome to Nepal".
We stayed overnight at a small town about 5km from the border...and headed to the bus station at 7am the next morning. It was an 18 seater bus...but we had about 25 people inside...and as i thought nobody else could fit in we picked up 1 more person on the road. The bus driver's assistant, Govinda, stood by the back door the entire 12 hour bus ride...running out at every police security stop...which was every 3-4 kilometers...security was tight...and the curving road carved into the mountains seemed endless. At one of the police stops the line was soooo long we all got out of the bus for to get drinks and snacks. The scenery was amazing, and the kids shied away from my camera.
Divalli in Kathmandu started yesterday and goes till sunday. Last night as we walked to a restaurant a little outside of Thamel we saw little kids going house to house singing, kind of like christmas caroling back at home.
Today is new years eve for one of the casts in Nepal...the Nepalese girl sitting next to me told me the name but i forgot. I'm walking south to Durbar Square to visit some temples today.
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