We had told Khan that we wanted a lie in this morning so we planned to meet him outside the hotel at 10am. Breakfast of honey porridge was pretty good as anticipated. The swimming pool outside was just staring at me, calling me over to relax and sunbathe in the gorgeous sunshine with a Pina colada by my side... but unfortunately my dreams were crushed when Matt interrupted my thoughts informing me that Khan was waiting for us outside. Oh well...Goa soon! Khan d...

5.15am our alarms went off! Today we would be visiting one of the most incredible and beautifully designed buildings in the world, the Taj Mahal! I couldn't believe we were actually going to see it, in all its glory! We caught a tuktuk there as we were aware the queues in the morning could be quite bad as it's the best time to go. On arrival in the pitch black, the queue was separated into two lanes, men and women. This was pretty pointless because the tickets di...

After a semi decent nights sleep, with only a few interruptions of people shouting outside our hotel room door, we headed for breakfast which was again toast and jam with some sweet lemon tea. Our driver Khan came to meet us at 9am outside the hotel. He made sure we didn't pay for our hotel room as the tourist company were paying for everything. Already, I liked the fact he was looking out for us. He knows the score here and that people will try anything but it r...

Well that was just as horrendous as I thought it might be! On a positive note, in the early hours of the morning, a train ticket officer came around and woke us up to see our tickets... sorry ticket. I startled awake with a jump and squinted until I could just about make out who he was. My first thought was we were being robbed as we had been warned several times that Varanasi station was known for pickpockets and people being drugged by their food and drink so t...

We woke around 5.30am in order to make it down to Assi Ghat in time for sunrise. Our boat, and a little lad named Raj, was waiting to take us out on the Ganges River. Unfortunately due to all the smog that was now in Varanasi following Diwali, we couldn't see the sun until it was quite some way into the sky, but it was still beautiful with multiple shades of pink and orange. We checked out of our hotel at 12 midday but had an 11 hour wait then until our night t...