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12/18 – The first round of Nepal Photos is up. The Annapurna trek was awesome. Story on its way.

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Sunauli, India -Whatever possessed me to stay the night on the Indian side, in the god-forsaken border town of Sunauli, rather than cross into Nepal, first chance? The whispering spirits of Dust, Grease, and Diesel. Maybe the town was lonely. It was certainly desperate. And I was tired. All night on the hard-pack bunk (#14) of the only sleeper car on the passenger train from Varanasi to Gorakhpur, someone’s smelly feet, my bad stomach forcing me to grab my cowshit-encrusted shoes from under the pack which occupied a full half of my bed, slink down to the floor without kicking someone below me in the head, and make my way to that little metal room at the end of the car with a keyhole-shaped squatter flushing directly onto the tracks. Then the bus to the border which, like the passenger train, stopped everywhere, finally landing in Sunauli where I was met by the inevitable chorus of rickshaw drivers jockeying their wheels into position in front of the bus door and shouting at me (only me) through the closed window pane. The only way to lose them is to keep blurting “No thanks” and head off with determination in some direction, any direction, as though you know where you are going. Which you don’t.
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