President Hotel, Patna, Bihar

I am filled with a 1960s sense of journalistic adventure. The President is rather grand, I fell asleep to a saxophone playing outside with an indian band, when I woke this morning a copy of "The Times of India" was posted under my door - in full and glorious English, a uniformed room waller just delivered my chai and announced in beautiful English that "your tea is complimentary ma'am" ...and I should hope so too at seventeen of my English pounds per night. To bring perspective in, I have been paying up to 650 rupees but largely 350-500 rupees per night and this room was 1200 rupees with a stonking Biharian tax of 15.2% on top!

I came to be here having travelled for 13 hours by bus, second class train, tempo and rather too much walking from Kushinagar, the somewhat indian-tourist-spoiled (moving and well preserved historical sights excepted) village where Buddha gave his last sermon, left his body at 80 years old and was cremated.

Patna is not listed as a place anyone would want to stay in for any length of time and there are good reasons for this, 99% of the hotels do not accept foreigners, 80% of those that do are prohibitively expensive (c. £50), 50% of those that are affordable are dirty brothelesque pits and that leaves the tiny few that, lo and behold the lonely planet had already singled out as being the right places to stay. Unfortunately for my gorgeous companions from Barcelona and I, we did not go directly to the President Hotel from the guide book and decided to see for ourselves so we deduced these facts on Patna's accomodation ourselves whilst carrying half our bodyweight in backpacks, with our heads draped in scarves and blankets as we tried helplessly to melt our snail silohuettes into the frenetic evening crush-hour.

The boys settled on the hotel beyond the President where they secured a room for 200 rupees less than me, however, I am safe, very clean thanks to hot water quite literally by the bucket load (no shower) and for the first time since leaving home I have that ambient central heating warmth throughout my whole body. This said, I have decided to sit in my room this morning and revel in hot chai and a noisy electric heater as I write.

Bihar is India's most flood-prone state, it is also one of its poorest which is why it seems so ironic that its capital is the most expensive place for a visitor to stay. We entered Bihar by train from Gorakhpur and it was as misty and cold as Uttar Pradesh had been for the last few days, however, the area around Sonepur which the train gently rolled through on its approach to the Ganges was undoubtedly the most beautiful slice of India that I have seen on this trip. Tall palms and small oak shaped trees reflected themselves in irrigation pools and tickled the dusty paths that wound between endless small and varied crop fields. Ladies in bright saris bent in harvest fervour in the fields, men in turbans and dhoti (a sarong with the back tucked in at the front middle) turned earth with hoe-like tools and occasionally groups of people wandered or bicycled slowly along the tracks. Peaceful rural India, oh how we longed to get off the train and just wander those tracks.

After around 5 hours, our "super-fast" train (it said so on the ticket) arrived at Hajipur on the northern bank of the Ganges from where we took a tempo to Patna on the south side. Due to the propensity this area has for flooding, the bridge/causeway over the Ganges is collosal. The 5 Indian men who had the misfortune of sitting in a tempo (smaller than a Vikram but larger than an Auto with a logical seating plan for 6 small people) with 3 europeans AND their 6 backpacks eventually came to an agreement that it was actually 5.9km long and not 6km which had been winning the argument for much of the journey. All told they were justifiably proud of this lifeline and delighted that we were so excited by it too. And I was, it was my first view of the famous Ganges and we cruised high above it as the sun was leaving the mist to another cold night, reflections from the southern bank danced over the water and drivers threw garlands of flowers from their vehicles in acts of devotion with the intention of them dropping into its sacred waters. It was a magical few miles over this gigantic river system but it remains uncaptured because whilst my eyes feasted on this evening treat, my body was crushed under two rucksacks, between two passengers and I had completely lost the feeling in my left foot. The idea of trying to extract my camera with my free arm which had a range of about 45 degrees in one plane was proposterous and it was like this that we left the magic behind and entered Patna.