I gotta say Agra has a bit of a pong about it. Everyone says India smells but I havnt found that so far. Sure there is the odd smell when someone dumps a steaming **** on the footpath in front of you but generally I have found it to be OK, til I got to Agra. It smells like a sewer. The train was 5hr late coming from Varanasi cos we were stopped for 4hr of the last 6hr. After the trouble getting a room in Varanasi I thought I would have trouble again because ...

Because of the Shiva festival I decided to do a short side trip to Sarnath. All the temples in Varanasi are lit up like xmas trees and have a marshall stack out the front with **** hindi music blasting out. Most also have a Buba out the front to collect the donations. The auto I took was like a mobile boom box. The driver insisted on playing **** hindi music at full volume right near my head. To be fair he stopped and changed to equally **** 'western' music when ...

Varanasi is one of the oldest living cities on earth and holy to millions. We left the train station at Varanasi and the streets were chockers with people, cows, dogs rickshaws and taxi's. It was total chaos on the road, there were people everywhere and I was trying to dodge the cow **** and negotiate with the rickshaw walla. It is great. This is the real India. I love this place. There is a big Shiva festival on today so every freak, lunatic and nutbag in India ...

Before leaving Kolkata today I have all day to kill so I went sight seeing. First up I went to the produce market cos as you know Im right into produce. It was pretty much what you see all over the place with the usual foul smells. The 'beef' and 'mutton' market next door was heaps more interesting. They were hacking into the carcasses of buffalo and goats with axes and cutting them into various pieces. Some guys had the great job of washing out the guts and vari...

Chowringee is the backpacker heart land and we are smack in the middle of it in Sudder St. Any flea pit with a door they call a hotel room and charge 100 Rp per night. I arrived here with the two Polish girls (cant say there names let alone spell them) and Mike the American and we all had breakfast then went in search of a room.The girls picked one place not suitable then another same then Mike found one we all agreed was OK. There are heaps of steps cos it is on...