The only similarities the countries have is they both serve Indian food and have no electricity for the better part of each day! So far, we have only stayed in 2 places where there is constant electricity, these being in big Cities like Delhi and Mumbai; everywhere else has a maximum 12hours of electricity per day.
Another similarity is that anywhere outside the big cities don't have mains water, they have a well or a pump tap which they cart to and fro with empty and full water bottles.
The cities in India like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore are all similar to those Cities we've visited in our previous trip round Southeast Asia such as Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh whereby they are all under construction for new western high rise buildings and all are pure and utter chaos whether its with motorbikes or people!!
Kathmandu gives you a different feel, although you're in the capital city you still feel like you're in a rural area.
The people here are a lot more laid back, than in India where you get hassled pretty much non-stop (we found out it's not rude to ignore them so it died down for a bit when we started that!) but you do get used to it, and after a few weeks you don't notifce it as much, to when you first arrive.
With india, we found that the majority of people are really nice but there was a certain type that you had to watch out for; if people talk to you and seem almost too friendly, they're either gay or want something. They'll pretend they dont and then try and charge you once you've taken it (e.g. a guy on our boat in Varanasi took a lotus flower to put in the river because the man said it was free, then he set it off in the water and he was asking for money!) or they are trying to fleece you into visiting their shop!
In Nepal they are friendly and want to help you out, if we're walking round looking lost, they'll come over and help us out. Everywhere you walk, people call out "namaste" to us and want a little chinwag.
With it's mini villages or tibetan communities within walking distance from the main city you could get away from all the chaos for half a day, whereas if you wanted to get away from the chaos in Delhi etc, you would have to get a local bus (if squeezing 10,000,000 people on a tiny minibus, with a mixed smell of fumes and BO is how you like it) out of the city!
Although you get a rural feel, that's not to say there is no chaos (like Vientiane). The traffic in Kathmandu (once the strike finished) however was a different story so much that we got a face mask (without looking like a lemon) to walk around in! Crossing the road is an art over here, so we used our tactic from SE Asia where we follow the locals and cross when they cross...a few near misses and getting clipped by the ridiculous amount of stuff they try and carry on their mopeds, we had made it to the other side!
The transport works in India's favour though! I'll give them credit for that! Although some of our train journeys were a bit of a nightmare, it was mainly our fault for trying to get away with having the wrong tickets and hope the instructor had some "compassion" to let us off. The trains were only the odd hour late with their arrivals, you got a bed which was relatively comfortable, which converts into a chair in the day for a somewhat comfy ride. You could also get a train to almost anywhere which was handy especially when we changed our plans and decided we'd go from Varanasi across to the other side at Mumbai.
The public transport in Nepal, was a little bit different! The little buses were ok, but when it came to the 6-7 hour bus rides to and from places, the buses were rickety old things! sounding like they weren't going to make it half the time. We had a hard seat, 9 times out of the 10 the seat recliner wouldn't work so you have to sit upright on a hard as nails seat, whilst the Nepali guy in front of you had a seat where the recliner seemed not only to work but to work too well! His head was almost in my lap!
The Buses had no suspension, although you're sitting high up, you feel every stone we drove over and it feels like its going to tip the bus....Not to mention the windy mountain roads! On our way back from Chitwan we saw a lot of crashes! A lorry had gone into someone's house on the mountain cliff! and another bus had flipped onto its back!Overtaking on hairpin bends is not the cleverest idea unless you had a deathwish...but we kept doing it, every corner when we got behind a lorry!
Chitwan failed to have any sturdy houses not to mention rickshaws, tuk-tuks or taxis and instead used horse and cart, ox-carts or elephants to get around. The houses were made out of mud and bamboo! The horse and cart ride was an experience! the bags are up at the front with the driver facing the horse whilst me and Sarah were tucked in the back of the carriage facing the floor! any slight bumps or hills and we would have been straight out of the back face down on the track!
Kathmandu seems a lot poorer than most cities we've been to, where there is no sign of any western style buildings undergoing constructions or even planning, all streets are little back lanes with the front of everyone's house becoming a mini shop in the day, and a home at night. Whether it sells cooking utensils, or chopped up pieces of meat (Sarah saw a woman throw a pigs head on the table the other day for her husband to start chopping up, so I'm keeping off meat at the moment!) to massive sacks of chillis!
India seems to have a reputation for being dirty and yeah Delhi is dirty...so are big cities in any country. You also ask yourself do you really go to India expecting it to be all squeaky clean?do you travel to the less developed world and expect it to be all spotless? If we wanted to visit really clean places, we'd stay at home. One thing we did notice was how people think India is all disgustingly dirty etc, but in comparison to Nepal, we have seen a lot worse in Kathmandu (some little kids playing with dead rats in the sewage gutters at the side of the road!)
The prices for alcoholic beverages in Nepal was ridiculous! You can get a bottle of local wine for 60p, and a barrel of tongba (Tibetan beer) for 50p!! that won Nepal over right from the word go!!
Although, we thought we were getting wine and beer when we ordered 'a bottle of local wine' and a 'tongba'....how wrong could we be.
The wine was served in a used beer bottle which they poured into our empty water bottle! We had a smell and it smelt like vodka!...asking the guy what was in the wine he replied 'a little bit of wine, and a lot of vodka...very strong'...it made tesco value vodka smell like smirnoff!! but 75cl's worth for 60p!! BARGAINS!
On the menu tongba (Tibetan beer) was under the 'liquor' section and not the 'beer' section....thinking thats a bit strange he walks out with a massive flask of boiling water and a mini wooden barrel (about 500ml) full of millet :S some tiny seeds. You pour the hot water in and leave it for a few minutes before you drink.You do this 4 times....each time you do it it gets stronger and stronger in the alcoholic content!...This tasted far from beer, it started off tasting like Mulled wine and after the 2nd refill it started to taste really strong! I felt fine, then I stood up!! Definately a winner!! Apparently its used like we use brandy in england, in the winter, to warm the ol' cockels!.
India had it's own honey bee brandy which was £1.50 for a massive litre bottle which was a good contender, and I never thought I'd say Honey bee could be beaten as it was that good! but it has to take demotion to 2nd place I'm afraid...
So far 2 countries down, and we loved them both, how India had everything you could need and just as you thought you had seen it all, you moved to the next place and it was completely different, and then moving into the mountainous scene of Nepal - the country with the live goddess, the country with so many monkeys they're like vermin, with the locals spending most of their day with a catapult firing nuts at them!
One things for sure, we're going to miss paying £2-£3 (between us) every night for a room!!!
...nevertheless we're looking forward to meeting our Hong Kong friends from disney finally! who have promised to and show us around the Hong Kong so it should be good!!
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