driven out of Nepal and into India by the Maoists

we were pretty happy to leave China and arrive in Kathmandu (with a surprise stop in Lhassa, not marked on our plane tickets!).  but our relief quickly faded away when we found out that the Maoist Party would be holding a "bandh" or a general strike starting on May 1st.  during the bandh the Maoists force all shops to close and shut down all transportation.  we decided we would try and wait out the strike -- which ended up lasting 8 days.  in the mean time, we got food poisoning, researched all possible flights out of Kathmandu and watched a lot of TV news we couldn't understand. of course, the day we finally bought tickets into india the strike was called off!  we ditched our tickets and took the bus to Pokhara -- but with conflicting news reports about Maoist agitation continuing and with the Nepali constitution running on May 28th we finally gave up and headed into India.  we are pretty disappointed we left Nepal without doing any trekking and that we have now have the full heat of Indian summer to deal with!  but despite the heat Varanasi is.....crazy.  easily the dirtiest place we've been yet -- cows, goats, holy hindu men, kids with ipods, and beggar children everywhere.