Wow. It's been quite a journey.

I guess I ought to start from the beginning. When I last left you I was in Thamel in katmandu with a bit of a stomach ache. Well, later that evening I was on a bus to Sanauli (the border with India) clutching my butthole closed like my life depended on it, which in a way it did, as I'm sure the guy sat next to me wouldn't have been too pleased if I just let go the whole mess right beside him.
Before going on i think i should comment that it is now almost certain that Vishnu, the god of Buses, has put a curse on me. As you may remember from previous posts, every time I ride an overnight bus, I get Diorreah. This might be understandable if I often got it, but the fact is that the ONLY time I get diorreah has been on these overnight bus rides! I refer you back to ... 11th March, 18 March, 13 April 2003....

So anyway, back to this story. No sooner had I got on the bus than the telltale farts began. Then came the fatal fart. The one that you only just stop in time, the sheer effort of holding it back bringing out a cold sweat on your forehead. I clenched with all my might, but then the fumes coming in the window as we drove through central katamndu started to make me feel nauseous! I wanted to throw up, which would have been easy as there was an open window right beside me, but I knew that if I threw up there was no way i could keep my bum-dam operating. So I grimaced and beared it, and after a few hours of suffering we eventually reached a toilet stop. I rushed to the little corrugated iron cubicle and let rip a torrent the runny stuff. It was like turning on a tap in cambodia (if you haven't been there, the water is brown). The toilet was sooo hot that after a few seconds my whole body was literally drenched in sweat, my clothes stuck to my skin and my face dripped onto the floor. I waited in there until I thought there was nothing left in me, and then evntured outside. All the foreigners from the bus had sat in a long row directly opposite the toilet, and they all looked at me as if I was a freak. "What have you been doing in there?!" asked a Chilean guy. "Shhh, it's a secret!" I told him confidentially, before running back into the cubicle. After coming out the second time I went round asking if anyone had any immodium. No one did. The we got back on the bus.
No sooner had the bus pulled away than i needed to go again. Badly! For the next 3 hours i held on, desperately trying to control the situation. Every now and then I would nearly dose off to sleep but as soon as this happened my sphincter would start to relax and I would be woken abruptly by a loud alarm bell going off in my head "Wake up! Your about to shit your pants!!". Luckily i would always wake up in time to avert a disastor, but each near miss would bring me closer to my breaking point....

Eventually we reached the second toilet stop and once again I ran off the bus. This time the I had to share the cubicle.... with a large toad! After locking the door with a twig (don't ask) and squatting over the hole in the floor, I suddenly noticed a large toad trying to get out through the crack of the door. He was way too fat however, and every now and then he'd turn around and start looking for alternative exits, at which point he'd catch sight of me, look at me suspiciously for a bit, and then decide that maybe he could squeeze thru that crack after all and go back to his hopeless struggle. Anyway, apart from the toad, this stop was the same as the last. Bum becomes tap, tap washes hands, hands lift me over other passengers and onto seat, seat begins to bash bum, bum becomes tap again.....

After a few more stops, none with toilets (shit at side of road) we eventually arrived in Sanauli, or at least somewhere near Sanauli. The journey had been 12 hours of hell. I was sorely tempted to just get a hotel here and wait till I recovered, but the Danish guy I had sat next to convinced me just to pop some immodium and head onto Gorakpur, in India, to get my train ticket reserved. Ok, I thought, and popped some immodium.

After clearing customs, we got on a local bus to Gorakpur. the bus was packed to the roof (plus packed on the roof!) ans everyone was in the middle of a heated argument about something, so the bus couldn't move. We waited half an hour before we even started moving, and then after we started moving, i realised that I still needed to shit. great. I aslo need to sleep almost as badly as I needed to shit. Somehow i once again survived with clean pants, and we eventually arrived in gorakpur, where I was told that all trains to calcutta were booked up for the next 2 days. The thought of waiting in Gorakpur for 2 days was too much. It's a shithole. Luckily I met an american guy who also wanted to go to Calcutta and we both decided to head to varanasi, which is kind of on the way.... we got tickets and I spent the rest of the day in a hotel resting....
So now i'm in varanasi, which is a pretty crazy town. I'll tell you more about it later, cos right now my tummys starting to feel a little unstable.....

Oh by the way, Selene has put up pictures of our Nepal adventure. Check them out here : http://sg.photos.yahoo.com/billy_selene