Day 7 - Varanasi - Saturday 22nd October 2011

We woke at 6am and after an hour of broken conversation with the Indian men in our carriage, mostly centring the subject of cricket, our train pulled into Varanasi station. My first sight was of a man weeing next to a pile of poo - even for me, it was a little too early in the morning for that! The pickup driver from our hostel was patiently waiting for us (even though we were over an hour late due to train delays) with a sign stating "Mr / Mrs Adam Slint"! It seems the Indians have an issue with the letter F, which could prove to be interesting given our surname! After a short walk through the alleys of Varanasi old town (which seemed like an eternity bearing in mind I was carrying both my full heavy rucksack and day sack with a hoodie and scarf on, whilst all the time trying to avoid cattle, people, cars, follow Adam, you name it), we arrived at Ganpati Guest house on the Meer ghat. Once there, we headed up to the rooftop restaurant and ate cheese and potato paratha's and drank chai tea whilst watching the day to day going on of the Ganges. The view from the rooftop was incredible!! After a rest, we headed out for a scroll along the ghats of the Ganges, stopping occasionally to watch the events of the afternoon unfold; buffalo swimming, men washing their bodies and away their sins, women washing their clothes - pretty much everything goes on in this river. Adam even put his hands in - although he promptly asked for the hand sanitizer straight after (thanks Roger and Emma for that!)! It probably didn't help that he read earlier that day about the pollution levels of the Ganges -apparently, water that is safe for bathing should have less than 500 faecal coliform in every litre of water, samples of the Ganges show that it has 1.5 million and parts of it are so heavily polluted it is actually septic, basically no dissolved oxygen exists! We decided to head up to the Dolphin restaurant to grab a bite to eat and as we got to the top, we bumped into 2 of the travellers we had met at Mr Singh's - small world! So we had an (illegal) beer (no alcohol is supposed to be consumed near the Ganges) and a bite to eat with James and Laura and chatted. Come 7pm we all headed down to the Dasaswamedh Ghat for the evening Ganga Aarti with Puja (a nightly ceremony where everyone sings and dances whilst the Holy men light fire candles and perform rituals). We all lit flower candles and floated them onto the Ganges and all had a red bindi painted on our foreheads - then sat and watched with everyone else the singing and dancing. I've seen this ceremony on TV before but being there in the flesh is out of this world - it felt extremely special and one of those moments that you know you'll remember forever. I know this all sounds a bit mushy but I read somewhere before we left that if you let it, India can capture your heart and tonight it kind of did that for me. I know we are only 7 days in but so far every day just gets better and better and tonight rounded it off - definitely the best day so far. If you're considering coming to India, make sure Varanasi is on your itinerary - yes the centre is smelly, dirty, poverty stricken and the things that go on here are a million worlds away from the day to day of Ewell village (Adam said that's for Mr Deeley!) but there is something really awe inspiring about this place. It's hard to put the express the words to give it justice so just believe me when I say, you have to see it.

Anyway, after I'd pulled myself together (!), we headed back to our hostel and chilled ready for another early (6am) start for our boat ride down the Ganges at sunrise

P.S. Don't worry Marv, Adam hasn't changed yet! X

Day 8 - Varanasi and then train to Kolkata - Sunday 23rd October 2011

Another ridiculously early start for us - I dragged Ad out of bed at 5.30am and we took the steep walk down to the Ganges. Once there, we haggled for a boat ride and after 5 minute got bored and agreed on 200 Rps for us both for an hour trip (about £2.70). Our boat man, Raoul talked us through each of the ghats and took us to the Manikarnika ghat, which is the main burning ghat - so where everyone is cremated. The corpses are doused in the Ganges and then set fire to with various types of wood. Amazingly, it doesn't smell at all and apparently this is because they use sandal wood which takes away the smell of the burning bodies. We saw 5 fires - it's really surreal to see such an intimate act take place in full view of everyone.As well as the burning ghats, we also saw everyone having their daily wash - the men with little more than a cloth on whereas the women in their full sari's in the water.

After checking out of our hostel, we decided to head to the Lotus lounge, which overlooks the Ganges, to chill out for the afternoon before catching our 18.10 train. We ended up spending 5 hours there and went through several courses of food including momos - Nepalese dumplings.

The traffic on route to Varanasi station was a nightmare, we arrived at just gone 6 and to our dismay the electronic board showed our train leaving at that moment from platform 4. We pegged it down and jumped on the already pulling away, crowded train - picture this, we were the only 2 westerners (with massive rucksacks!) trying to squeeze to our sleeper carriage only to realise that when we got to our seats, there was already 6 people sitting there. After about 5 minutes of toing and fro-ing with the other passengers, our worst fears were confirmed - s***, we were on the wrong train!! Panic set in for Adam whereas I, on the other hand, just couldn't stop giggling - what plonkers we were! After lots of help from our fellow passengers (they even gave up their seats for us sorry looking pair and laughed at us - a lot), it turned out that hope was not lost and that we could get off at the next station and hopefully pick up a train. After 30 mins, our stop came and we waved "Namerswar" (goodbye in Hindi - wrong spelling, sorry!) to our new found friends and stepped off onto the platform of god knows where. After asking most of the station it seemed that our original train was due to pass by in about 30 mins - YIPPEE! We eagerly awaited our train whilst taking in the surroundings. I've read about the children who live in the train stations in India but had not yet seen them until this point. There were about 12 of them ranging in ages, the youngest about 5 going up to maybe 12 and they looked different to the other children that we'd seen so far - even the ones living on the street. They quite obviously had no parents and were fending for themselves and seemed to have a slightly glazed look about them. Anyway after a while of trying not to stare, we noticed they kept on sniffing the cloths they had in their hands and it turned out that the cloths had tipex or glue on them, which explained the glazed looks. It's really hard not to judge these sorts of scenes with our western views but however much we tried to find reason or justification, we couldn't help but wonder how these sorts of things can happen in a country where so far, we have found the people so friendly and willing to help strangers (much more than any country we've ever been to before), but I suppose when there is a population of 1.027 billion it's hard to look after everyone.

It wasn't long before our train pulled in and we climbed on, we were thankful that it was actually our train and that we would soon be in Kolkata! All apprehension we'd had about going sleeper class was completed dismissed by the bigger fright of missing our train and actually when we finally arrived at our seats, sleeper class was not as bad as everyone makes out. The classes on the trains go 1st class ac, 2nd class ac, 3rd class ac and then finally sleeper class - it's basically 8 beds with open windows. To quote Meera, who was the host of our first homestay in Delhi, "even my staff do not go sleeper class!"