Waking up to the sound of an overly enthusiastic alarm clock is never ideal, but when a sunrise boat trip is on the cards you can avoid hitting the snooze button with ease.

It was very surreal getting to our ghat at 5:45 in the morning; everything was quite as a tomb, a stark contrast to the hubbub of usual Indian life. With sunrise quickly approaching we lengthened our stride to ensure that we got to our skipper in time - a youthful fellow that had an affinity for wearing adidas paraphernalia. As promised, he was waiting for us and before we knew it we were out on the water accompanied by a loud and violently shaking engine.

Almost in the blink of an eye the river was teeming with boats, all of which were paddling or motoring tourists through the tousled river. On the entirety of our trip so far we have seen next to no tourists, yet here they were in their hundreds! Where they have all been hiding with their huge cameras and neckerchiefs, I don't know.

As it happens, a sunrise in Varanasi was impossible to see at this time due to the smog. Chortling to ourselves and with or captain we noticed that the sun was well clear of the horizon before we even noticed it; a spherical, orange smudge weakly shining through the smog. Despite not having the idyllic sunset we had envisaged the trip was hugely enjoyable and peaceful and something that I will not easily forget.

Rhaj, our captain, was hugely knowledgable regarding Varanasi and its ceremonies, as you would expect as he had grown up here. He informed us that Varanasi is considered the 'Holiest City of India' and that people flock here with their dead or their dead's ashes for one very important reason: when your ashes are put in the Ganges river at Varanasi your atman (soul) goes straight to heaven and leaves Samsara. This is something to do with the river having a whirlpool effect here where it flows South to North along the Western bank (where the ghats are) as opposed to the usual North to South. If I'm honest, I'm not really sure how this ties in with the Hindu belief of Karma, could I not just behave despicably my entire life then simply have my ashes brought here and be free of Samsara? He also informed us that Varanasi has 87 ghats in total where the first is called Vijayanagaram and the last Assi, making the city's name : Varanasi.

Having had another enlightening helping of Hindu culture we retreated to a westernised cafe in order to scrounge WIFI and air conditioning. Here a 25 rupee Pepsi bought us an hour and a half of comfort, well worth it. I think the owner's leniency with our loitering was chiefly due to the Indian government randomly banning the use of 500 and 1000 rupee notes - something that caught a lot of people out and made smaller notes extremely hard to come by.

When we finally decided that we had out stayed our welcome we made our way to the infamous 'Brown Bread Bakery', a German bakery that Chelsea had somehow found online - that girl and food...

As it turned out the bakery was a very hip place which, after you'd scaled several thousand steps, had an amazing roof top eating area. It was caged in to stop monkeys stealing from you and had floral everything as well as a pretty nifty long, low table covered in blankets and pillows that you all squeezed around and chatted. Here we met a Belgium named Toby who was travelling alone, and intended to do so for the foreseeable future. He was single, had long hair and a hairline like the horizon and was undoubtably 'cool' - he and Chelsea really hit it off which was absolutely super!

After hearing an authentic Indian band consisting of a sarod (a very complex guitar looking thing) and dhadd (two drums that made the weirdest sounds - sort of like someone standing on a toad with very full lungs) which sounded amazing but made us all really drowsy as we chewed our complimentary breads.

We decided that we had better head back to our hotel and prepare ourselves for the inevitable train journey to Agra at half past eleven. Great.