Blog from Agra to Varinassi

Delhi - Agra - Varinassi

From Delhi we hopped over to Agra to see a certain temple one cannot go to India and not see! The Taj Mahal its self was stunning, although the surrounding area, where all the struggling travellers stay is not so pretty! Al and I pulled ourselves out of bed to go and see it at dawn when the air is much cooler and swarms of people are less. The most fascinating sight we actually saw on the grounds was a bin! The first we'd seen!! Lou was still struggling with the jet lag and not exactly a morning person shall we say, so had to go later with the other droves of plebs!

Having ticked the Taj off the list we took a night train to Varinassi, a very holy and sacred place. Hindu's believe if you die there you are released from the life cycle and go and sit on cloud 9 for eternity or something like that. Getting on the train was an experience enough I had attempted to book the train tickets myself, but somehow managed to get waiting list tickets although I'd paid full price. As usual I was told to bribe somebody if we were going to get seats.

Varinassi was another smelly Indian city that we'd grown accustomed to by now, although Lou was still settling in, and Al was still complaining of course! We treated ourselves to a slightly nicer hotel which was 200 rupees over budget! It was nicely closed off to the street and had a pool and a bar and flees (damn itchy b*****s)!! We took a boat on the river to see the festival of burning bodies, which is the main attraction in there. That was definably a once in a life time experience as we got eaten alive by mosquitos and every photo was distorted by all the flies around.

That was our final recollection of India before flying to Nepal. We had be warned prior that Katmandu was a dirty, smelly, dump, but having arrived fresh from India we found it quite pleasant!