An insanely early departure this morning(4.30) for an all day journey to cross the frontier and into Nepal.Bizarrely we got into a minibus which took us past the main railway station in Varanasi which was opposite our hotel,down the backstreets to the previous station from where the train to the border starts.The reason for this was self evident as we had time for a cup of tea,find our seats and stow our luggage on the racks easily. When we pulled into the main station a few minutes later pandemonium reigned as everyone piled on jostling for space and generally making a fuss.The train carried on through fertile lands stopping at the occasional station until we reached the end of the line after 6 long hours.We transferred to a minibus that crawled through the town with it's heaving mass of humanity,rickshaws and tuktuks until we reached open country for another 4 hours of bumpy roads,mad cyclists and thankfully no cows as most seemed to be tethered.Soon columns of gaily coloured lorries parked up meant that we were approaching the border.We descended from our bus,the luggage transferred to a couple of rickshaws to take it across the border to our next bus.We on the other hand had to have our passports stamped on exit from India in a little hut by the side of the road.We were now free to walk through an Indian arch,across a definite nomansland and through another arch into Nepal. Visa formalities were a doddle with much form filling and 50 US$ but they were the cheeriest border people ever?We picked up our driver for the next week who took us to our hotel for the night.All of us on the tour were quite surprised at the difference between Nepal and India.There was virtually no honking from vehicles,the houses were finished and had front gardens,there was far less rubbish and mess as cattle were all tethered,the roads were well made even in the backstreets and we saw adverts for beer,whiskey and gin. At our meal a new beer was sampled,Everest and very tasty it was too.