The main thing we wanted to do in Nepal was the Annapurna Circuit which is a two to three week trek around the Annapurna mountain range. This trek goes up to a height of just under 5500 metres through one of the highest mountain passes in the world called Thorung La and then continues back down the other side. No walk in the park by any stretch of the imagination and we expected a lot of beautiful scenery and tiring days. I'll briefly explain what we did on e...

After Varanasi our plan was to go to Pokhara in Nepal. This meant 1 overnight train, 2 buses and a border crossing! Our train from Varanasi to Gorakhpur, a town 3 hours from the Nepalese border, was scheduled to leave at 12:30 at night. We arrived in plenty of time and all the announcements and boards told us the train would be on platform 1 at 12:30. A train arrived at 12:30 onto our platform and of course it was a totally different one! So for the next 2 hours ...

Once we'd finished in Amritsar we were off to Varanasi, a city on the holy river Ganges. To get there though we had a 24 hour train journey so we decided that we'd need to go up one rung in train class – to AC3 (essentially 3rd class). Previously we'd always gone sleeper class, the 4th class. The difference was incredible though; comfier beds, pillows, blankets and even people coming round to take food orders for you! We were impressed. Although...

Amritsar began with a huge boo boo. We had a train booked for the 8th March at 01:55. I should mention we booked this train around 2 weeks ago as it was such a long trip the trains get booked quite far in advance. We weren't anticipating this which is why we ended up spending so much extra time in Rajasthan. So we get to the train station around 10pm as for some reason after 10pm tuk tuks stop running in Bikaner. Annoying but what can you do. We stocked up on...