Initially the two of us and our two Japanese friends had the six-sleeper compartment to ourselves, which was great :-) However, that ended at around 2 am when the other two people arrived - a man who turned out to be the loudest snorer in the universe, and a mother with a small baby who would not stop screaming. So yeah... not a lot of sleep happened after that :-/

Our train eventually pulled into Varanasi Station at around 06:30 on Thursday 6 September and we've never been so grateful for a hotel pickup - neither of us had the energy to fight with taxi drivers or walk around dodging crowds of people and cows. We dumped our bags in the room and took a walk into the Old City where we immediately got lost :-/ The area along the Ganges is a maze of narrow, winding alley-ways that all look pretty much the same - we spent about 45 minutes wandering around before we actually managed to find the Ganges! It was so nice to find a bakery/restaurant where we were ale to have a delicious breakfast and just sit for a while :-) Energy restored, we found our way back to our guesthouse for a quick shower and a much needed sleep. Later that afternoon (after Kevin had almost lost a finger to the metal overhead ceiling fan) we caught a cycle-rickshaw to Assi Ghat for dinner overlooking the Ganges, and some of what must be the best apple pie in all of India. Afterwards we sat on the nearby steps chatting to some locals as we waited for the evening's ceremony to begin. When the crowd started to disperse, we took that as our cue to leave, and we climbed into another rickshaw for the 15 minute ride back to the guesthouse. We were due to be up early the next day, so we went straight to bed.

Friday we were up early to watch the mornings' ceremony at the Ghat nearest to our guesthouse. There were lots of people bathing and praying, but also plenty of people pestering us to buy things or pay to watch from their boat. Soon we decided to move on to see what was happening at some of the other Ghats. Unfortunately, the path that normally exists long the river was well underwater, so we ended up having to walk away from the river through the various alleys, which of course meant that we got hopelessly lost at times :-/ Once the sun had well and truly risen, we grabbed some breakfast and then made our way back to the room for a rest and to escape the afternoon heat. Our guesthouse was able to hook us up with a sunset boat trip (many of the boats weren't running because of the flooding) so, after a late lunch, we headed out. It was really cool to see the old palaces and Ghats from the water in the soft evening light. We were still pretty stuffed from lunch so skipped dinner and went straight back to pack and to work on some admin for our time in the South.

Saturday we were up early again to get to the station in time for our 05:30 train up to Gorakhpur, where we would hopefully find a bus to take us further northwards, into Nepal!