Varanasi…and the pleasure of travelling with no guide

End of our Rajasthan trip, and it’s now of on our own… the real adventure can start !!

Arum (our ex driver) kindly drops us of at the station five hours before our train, so he doesn’t have to drive back to delhi in the evening…

Now being experienced travellers, five hours waiting is a super opportunity to regroup and get prepared for a train we surely cannot miss… or so we believe. Yep, we managed the impossible. Wait five hours on a platform and still miss the train.

In our defence, there are no signs showing which train is arriving, and we were mislead.

After a couple hours eating, reading and crowd gathering (after twenty minutes you can easily attract a crowd of over fifty men & rats just starring at you), the local birds (again!) were back home, or the roof of the train station as we call it. The noise level just gets crazy, and the platform bombarded with their droppings.

We then met this group of londoners, that we’d already seen in the morning at the Taj. One of the girls had reached “breacking point“,after being succesfuly targeted TWICE by the birds… I felt for her.

Anyway, these guys were also going to Varanasi bythe night train, and even better, had a local guy acting as group leader !! Nice…. or so we thought.

When the time for our train finally came, we gathered our bags, with one of our new friends going to ask the group leader if this was the right one. He came back smiling, saying that it wasn’t this one, and that indian trains are always late… (not untrue).

A couple minutes later, another train came along, this time the leader indicating it was the good one. Great, just need to go and ask him were we sit, I thought. Next thing I know is him telling me this isn’t my train, my train has already passed. I notice a smile on his face, and think he’s got a good sense of humour, but no time for a joke, I need to know where is my carriage. The guy we’d been talking to the most at that point tells me that the guide is a joker and it’s all a piss-take… or so we think for a couple of minutes until we realise he is serious!

That means we have to buy new tickets on the train, pay a penalty fare and our previous tickets aren’t refundable. Lesson learnt. Time to sleep before we get to Varanasi train station, described as a potentially dangerous place in Lonely Planet…

Varanasi is a major city for hindus (80% of indians) as it is on the banks of the holy Ganges.  Bodies come from all over the country to get cremated following a strict religious code and the ashes are then scattered in the river. As a proper caste society, there are different levels at which corps are burnt (highest point for the higher casts), but also different types and qualities of wood used for cremating. A special (low) cast deals with all the proceedings, and are able to get just enough wood to burn the body with no waste. One source of incoming for these people is searching the river where ashes have been scattered hoping to find any left over jewellery !

A big part of the city is made of very narrow streets, where little shops, children, beggars and the holy cows fight to get your attention. Unfortunately, the cows seem to win as you can’t really get rid of the permanent smell of cow dung in the streets (and it’s not just humans that get delhi belly).

Despite the unattractive description I might have made, we found Varanasi very relaxing and spent a nice few days there. The ongoing religious carnivals and the pleasant watching the Ganga Aarsi ceremonies that are made by local priests every sunrise and sunset make great entertainment.

It’s now time to plan the trip to Nepal (and making sure we don’t miss the train this time!).

Wanna fight?

Comments

[Aarathi]

Tomorrow is Diwali. Try to celebrate it with pop & fun. Don't forget to taste Diwali sweets
Here I'm craving for those delicious sweets.
Happy Diwali & enjoy ur trip.
If U have time try to visit Kerala - green state of india