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Published: August 31st 2010
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On my last day in Lumbini I bumped into a Spanish guy and girl who I had met in Kathmandu. Coincidentally, they were going to Varanasi on the same day as I was so I ended up travelling with them. Crossing the boarder to India from Lumbini was easy. You just get to Sonauli and walk across to India. The border was the most chilled out I’ve been to so far. I went to collect my Nepalese departure stamp and then across under the ‘Welcome to India’ signpost to get my Indian arrival stamp.
At first you don’t really notice the difference between the two countries. We took a bus to Gorakhpur as we were told that it is best to take a two hour bus to Gorakhpur and from there the train to Varanasi. It turned out to be a 4 hour journey to Gorakhpur on the most uncomfortable bus ever. There we took a ‘passenger train’ instead of the express train to Varanasi. I should have guessed what was coming when all Indians turned around and said: ‘you have passenger train tickets’ or ‘these are ONLY passenger train tickets’. They all were saying it with such a surprise.
What they were thinking was: ‘these stupid tourists are going to Varanasi on the cheapest train available and, by the way, the longest. It took hours to get to Varanasi. At the counter we were told that departure time is at 2.30pm and we would arrive at 8pm, which we thought would be ok. But we arrived at 2am. When I got to the point of not being able to sit anymore I went up to sleep on the shelf on top of the seats where you’d normally keep your luggage. I had a damn good sleep there.
In Gorakhpur you are able to see the differences between the countries. Well, to start with, there are no trains in Nepal. So travelling by train (again) was a nice change.
Varanasi is one of the holiest cities in India and apparently one of the poorest too. But I didn’t see anything new that I hadn’t seen in Nepal before. Along the Ganges are all the Ghats where the Hindus worship their gods and bath, mainly early morning or in the evening. At the main Ghat all Hindus collate at around 6pm for the start of the puja by the
Brahmins. We went to watch it from the boat. Even such a holy thing is a business opportunity for Indians. So to view it from a boat or any other surrounding viewpoint was 50Rs.
The next morning we got up really early to take the boat along the Ghats. We also saw some cremations. The horrible thing about the cremations is that they make it such a tourist attraction. For a few rupees you can get really close up. I refrained from doing that as I think a funeral is very private. Especially, since there is a 12 year old boy clean shaven in his white gown mourning the death of his mother or father. It's also not nice to see dead body parts being picked out and thrown into the river.
The next stop would be Agra.
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