Hello India!

So Nepal ends and India begins! After four months in Nepal I'm headed for two months in India, together with Julia and Magnus.
Getting out of Nepal proved a bit more complicated than we had originally envisioned. Thank-you Maoists. The strike was non-violent in the Kathmandu Valley, but there were reports of violence in other parts of the country. With the country essentially shut down local buses were out of the question, and no private operator was willing to take the risk of driving outside the valley.
The strike began on the 2nd, and out train tickets were booked for the 6th, so another way to the border was needed, and fast. The only option left was to fly, so accordingly, we booked a flight. The only problem was that everyone headed to India anytime in the near future was pushing up their dates, so everyone wanted to get to the border. In the end we pushed the train by a day, and left Kathmandu on the 6th.
The flight was on time, for Nepal (so it left within a half hour of when it was supposed to), uneventful, and very short. We flew to Simara, about 25km from the border. There were no taxis (damn strike again), so we took a horse-drawn cart to Birganj, the border town. It took about 90 minutes to get there, along a road that had almost no vehicles (the occasional passing police van). It felt more like 1900 than 2010, trundling along behind the horse.
For a tiny horse pulling 5 people, 3 large backpacks and 3 daysacks, it went impressively fast. At some points it was going at a full-on run. We changed carts in Birganj and headed across the border to Raxaul Bazaar, the Indian border town. It took two tries to actually get there, as we missed both border control offices the first time round. So technically I've been to Nepal twice and this is my second time in India. Only one officially counts though.
Raxaul is everything the Lonely Planet (aka 'the book') bills it as; a grim, dirty and crowded border town. It's really not all that bad excepting the total lack of restaurants. By this point it was over 48 hours since we'd had a proper meal though, so a restaurant would have been nice. The hotel provided food to the rooms though, and it was one of the best dal bhats I've had. Mostly cause it was real food though, in reality it wasn't that good.
The hotel in Raxaul was pretty grim - there was a constant lake on the bathroom floor, which flooded into the rest of the room when the shower was running - but we were out the next morning. The train to Kolkata left at 10am, not a moment too soon!
The train was scheduled to take 18 hours (in reality it took 20, not too bad), so it was essentially a lost day, but it didn't feel that way. I'm now an expert at entertaining myself, so it didn't feel too long, and there was tons to look at out the window. Plus, the feeling of being on the way somewhere, doing something with purpose, was great.
Despite there being 8 people sharing a roughly 2x3.5m space, it didn't feel at all cramped. There were two stacks of 3 beds each, perpendicular to the side of the train, and two along the opposite wall. Maybe 60 or so beds in the entire car, with AC. In fact, I woke up cold in the middle of the night, something I didn't expect to happen in India.
The train arrived around 6am, so we got a pretty good night's sleep. And now it's time to explore the city!

May

So my itinerary for May. Just like April, I'll post in more detail about everywhere.

1-6: Kathmandu
6: fly to Simara, pony cart to Birganj, cross the border to Raxaul Bazaar
7: train to Kolkata
8-11: Kolkata, train to Puri overnight on the 11th
12-16: Puri
16: Bhubaneshwar, night train to Visakphatanam (Vizag)
17-18: Vizag, night bus to Chennai
19: bus Chennai to Mamallapuram
19-22: Mamallapuram, back to Chennai and overnight bus to Bangalore on the 22nd
23-24: Bangalore, night bus to Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum)
25: bus Trivandrum to Varkala
25-28: Varkala
28: bus to Kollam
29-31: Houseboat on the backwaters around Kollam

The month saw us go from Nepal, down the east coast of India, across to the west coast, and begin our journey northwards!