Friday, 1 April 2011

"WHATS YOUR QUALIFICATIONS?"

One of my favorite Quotes is "Everything is exactly the way it is meant to be" George Faulkner (from the film 'a single man').When i say it in my head it makes me just except whats going on, but even that didn't make today feel any better.

Got up early and got a rickshaw to Sonauli where we wanted to cross the border, it was very busy with lots of people shouting at us, we went to the tourist office on the Nepal side but it was very unhelpful so we just literally walked across the border. Once we got to the other side we got pointed to a very shabby small looking shack like building. We went in and gave them our passports, they looked through and told us that we needed to sign out of nepal before we could enter India. This meant we had to recross the border (i was a little concerned they weren't going to let us, actually nobody seemed to care how many times we crossed the border). We got our passport stamped on nepal and filled in some paper work. Then crossed the border to India again, to then fill out even more paper work and get our passport stamped.
We had no Indian rupees and people kept on wanting us to change our nepal rupees even though we had explained a million times we only had like 20 rs left so it would be more than pointless trying to change it. The man in the Indian office said we couldnt change our english money on this side and there weren't any ATM's. We were already feeling reasonably peeved off, and had crossed the border a million times.
At this point our biggest boo boo of the whole trip came (thats how Giselle later put it). A man came into the office and told us to come with him and he can get us some money, at the time it felt like he was one of the Indian border people so we went with him. Across the road into a corridor in a building. We gave him 40 pounds to change, but he protested saying that that wasn't enough for 2 people. We new it was, that was our budget for two day's nearly. "no no the ATM's are all closed for 5 day's because of festival". It sounds completely stupid now, but we were stuck at the border with no money, with our rucksacks on and very hot and stressed. We could of just of ignored him, but then what if the ATM's were closed we would have no money. We gave him another 20 quid. 60 pounds in total, he gave us the money, we took it and in a rushed manner he ushered us into a jeep to take us to Gorakhpur. We got in and only then did we check the money (big mistake). Yep thats right they completly ripped us off and only gave us about 30 pounds worth of rupees.... who ever you are we hate you.
We were both sat in the jeep filling up with rage when a child beggar kept on coming to the window, she wouldn't go away so giselle shouted no in hindi at her ( i think giselle just wants to show of her hindi skills, i on the other hand don't have any so just stuck with 'no'). The little girl went away, but then a little boy came to my window, i said 'no, sorry'... he didn't listen, so i turned to him looked him in the eyes and very firmly said "NO". He went after that, sorry but we had just been ripped off, we werent going to start handing money out willy nilly.
We had sat around for ages on buses before, were never generaly in a rush. But today we werent taking any of it. Giselle marched off the jeep and yelled at 3 guys who were just hanging around outside the jeep "We want our rucksacks down now ! we are going to take the bus"... the man hesitated and tried to change her mind, but that wasn't going to happen. The man nodded at the man on top of the jeep who then proceeded to hand us our rucksacks. We ended up getting on another jeep later, oh well. It was nearly worth it just to see the terror on the guys faces as Giselle yelled at them.
The jeep ride was fine. We got to Gorakhpur it was very busy and very few tourists, we were still unsure whether to go straight to Varanasi or to stay a night there.We would of gone straight to Varanasi but nobody seemed to speak English and the i quote the 'very helpful tourist office' that the lonely planet mentioned was closed. We waited a long time and tried to find a hotel but the ones that were near were all booked up. We then went back to the train station. It seemed the only person that spoke English was a strange man who approached us, he asked us the normal questions. Where you from? How long you been in India for? Is it your first time? then he asked us what our qualifications were. Giselle tried to answer him. But no, he wasnt taking any of it. Giselle was stood trying to say as many possible ways of describing a theater degree as possible and the man was getting more and more angry and loud for that matter. "NO, YOU DONT UNDERSTAND, WHAT ARE YOUR QUALIFICATIONS." We were drawing A LOT of attention to ourselves, and a boy that for some reason kept on getting hit with a slipper came and stood right next to me (we suspect he was a robber or something). I'd had enough, i don't think I've felt so mental as i did at that moment, Giselle had been doing all the talking up until that point but i stop her and said "NO, we understand you perfectly your the one that doesn't understand us!' and then told Giselle that we should leave.
We later bumped into him "haha, your trying to tease me" I'm not sure he was all there.

What a horrible day, i was sat feeling sorry for my self ( i think it always helps)....that's it we're going to be stuck in Gorakphur FOREVER!....

What are parents for if you cant ring them up really early in the morning from India slightly distressed? (and they thought they had got rid of us). Dad picked up the phone, Giselle "I'm sorry it's so early but were stuck in a place called Gorakphur and the lonely planet guide lied about the helpful tourist office being helpful (it had now been closed for around 2 and a half hours even though the security guard said it would be open an hour ago) we cant find an internet cafe and no one speaks English." After telling dad about the scary qualifications man we asked him if he could look online and find any information on how to book tickets (as the foreigners ticket desk seemed to be none existent) or if that fails, if he could see if there were any nice hotels that had a free room in them. He found us some hotels, thanx dad ! :)

After finally finding a hotel we settled down and tried to relax. The hotel manager booked our tickets for the train to Varanasi for 6.30 the next morning, I'm sure it cost us more than it should of but we weren't in much of a place to argue.
We also got a tv in our room YAY, theres always about two english channels, we watched 'so you think you can dance?' with some pretty talented little boy on it. Then settled down and watched 'The Prince of Persia' which we enjoyed and made the day feel a little better. :) Thank you Jake Gyllenhaal for looking so beautiful and taking my mind of being in such an unhelpful place.

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