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Published: January 28th 2012
We were up at 7AM ready to tackly Varanasi's Old City. Or so we thought. We took an auto rickshaw from our hotel to the Old City for 100Rs. I think it should cost more like 50Rs, but we didn't really care. One dollar each? Okay, I'm not going to haggle over 50 cents. When we got dropped off in the Old City, we didn't really know where to go. We wanted to have breakfast at Brown Bread Bakery which is recommended in Lonely Planet. One young man showed us the way through the small alleys and when we arrived, he didn't want money but begged us to come to his father's shop. But there was a serious flaw in his plan. He didn't tell us the name of it and we had no idea where it was.
At Brown Bread, we were shocked, but I don't want to mislead you so I will tell you now we were at a fake Brown Bread! The downstairs wasn't even being utilized except for the cash register and it was dirty. We hoped upstairs was better. Oh my. Nope. The smell from the bathroom was absolutely appalling, so we changed seats after
we ordered. The seating consisted of mattresses covered in sheets that needed a good wash and low tables. Service was slow and there was no bakery. We saw one of the guys come in with two loaves of store bought white bread. There was one big group of about 15 people and Annette and myself. One guy was cooking. We finally got our drinks, and my latte was lovely, and I finally got my lemon and sugar crepe, which was also delicious, but after waiting an hour, they came and told Annette that there was no bread pudding. Could they not have told us that when she ordered it an hour ago? At the time, we were just sorely disappointed at how dirty and smelly the place was and how there was not bakery and we were pretty ticked off at Lonely Planet. HOWEVER, when I got to the airport two days later to fly back to Kuwait, I met one of the gals from the big group that was there when I was, and she said it was a fake!!! The real one is another 100m down the same alley. So beware and be careful! She said the real
one is really nice and well worth a visit.
After breakfast we found our way out of the winding lanes and some shops were just starting to open up, but we were leaving later that day and our mission was to see the ghats, so we didn't look around much. We walked out to the nearest ghat and it was quite a long set of stairs, and it was completely lined with beggars. They weren't performers or artists. They were beggars with missing limbs or other maladies. We hadn't seen this kind of poverty in India as we were pretty sheltered by our car and driver. Annette stopped to take a picture of a baby, that I still believe was a doll, and when she started digging in her bag for money for the woman, we were suddenly surrounded by beggars all wanting a piece of her wallet. I didn't want to leave her alone, but I had begged her not to take a picture because I knew what would happen. But I waited with her and she finally found her money and gave the woman 10Rs just as I was walking away. It was like something out of
a Thriller video.
Down at the ghat there were more beggars and there were a lot of wooden platforms set up for the regulars who work this ghat I think. Each platform seemed to belong to an old Indian man who was asking us if we wanted a massage. The thought of one of those nasty old me touching me made my skin crawl and those platforms were covered in dirty grass mats. We took some photos and moved on. We walked along the ghats for about an hour taking photos of the ghats, the architecture, the Ganges, the boats, the bathers, the pepole doing laundry, the laundry, the hashish smokers, the goats wearing t-shirts (what?) and the sleeping dogs that seemed to be everywhere. It was far more entertaining than my previous jaunt along the ghats last night.
After an hour, Annette was pretty hungry because she hadn't eaten the day before and her breakfast never came, so we wandered back up to the road and got a rickshaw back to our hotel and Open Hand Cafe. On the way back, we got stuck in the middle of some sort of parade for lack of a better
At the Ghats
Every ghat has a name but I forget the name of this one.word. There were pretty girls on two floats throwing rice at the crowd and people were fighting over these big bags of rice. And there were about 20 girls in saris walking barefoot behind the floats through the nasty streets. It was surreal and what was the point? Pretty rich girls throwing rice at poor people and causing fights? There were men hanging off either side of the floats preventing anyone from touching the girls or getting on the float. Is there not a more effective method of getting rice to the masses? I think the richshaw driver was enjoying it, but we were getting tossed around and I didn't like the idea that we were these two rich white women in the midst of all this fighting and pushing. We finally got the driver to take a side street and get away from it.
Back at Open Hand Cafe we had another lovely breakfast and shopped a bit more. It wasn't until the next day that I realized we didn't pay for our breakfast. They never brought the bill and we started shopping again and when we paid for our stuff, we totally forgot we hadn't paid for
Platforms at the Ghats
These guys were offering massage and ayurvedic remedies and palm readings. breakfast. I felt awful, but I knew if we tried to send cash to them it would never get there.
Back at Hotel Haifa we got our stuff and headed to the airport. Our flight was delayed by over two hours so it was 8:30PM before we got to Delhi. We had splurged and rented a room at a nice B&B and the owner had sent a taxi to the airport for us and he had been waiting since 4:30. He drove us straight to On The House B&B and we were so glad to be in this beautiful place. We took a quick look around and went to bed.
Tomorrow. Last day in India. Not much on the agenda except shopping. And leaving India. On New Year's Eve.
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