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Published: January 18th 2013
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Withthe exception of the few times it smelled like we were sitting inside of aburning pile of poop(sorry, best description I could come up with for thathorrible of a smell), the train was really quite nice. We actually arrived at the train station on time,which was shocking considering that almost every train at new delhi station wasdelayed by between 5-15 hours. It wasrelatively easy to find the government prepaid taxi stand and get a taxidowntown. After getting in, the guy toldus we needed to pay the 10R parking fee. We refused, and the
subject was dropped. He dropped us off in the middle of a busy unmarked intersection and toldus that it was as far as his car could go(most of the streets near the gangesare very tiny and not for cars), but I was very unsure. Everyone lies here, so I have learned totrust no one. After arguing with him forabout 5 minutes, I finally decided to believe him. Aftera 5 minute walk, as he had promised, we reached one of the ghats. If I thought Delhi was insane, Varanasi is 10times worse. I'm getting used to it allnow though, and we have our trains booked,
so the insanity has become fun. The ghats were are a sea of people swimming,bathing animals, washing dishes, cremating…. Just anything you can imagine todo in a river of sewage. As soon as wegot to the hotel, we went to the balcony for a look and saw a dead bodyfloating by. What a crazy place. After checking in, we went for a walk aroundtown, which is mostly a series of winding tiny alleyways filled with largepiles of poop, cows, goats, dogs, cats, rats and monkeys wondering around, andabout the most interesting group of people I have ever seen in my life. I have seen so many interesting things in<br style="color: font-family: arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif;
font-size: 13px; line-height: 15px;" />just this one day that I can’t even begin to remember them all. Every turn presented you with a newinteresting encounter. Finally, wearrived at the burning ghat(cremation ghat), where you aren’t allowed to takepictures and tourists can only be in a building overlooking the ghat(familiesonly at the water). Of course, mosttourists do take pictures, and we did. Luckily I have a camera that is easily hidden. . No one noticed, but I had to leave because the smoke was burning my eyes. I waited for mom, who also took a few pictures trying to be discreet, and when she came out, a man was following her asking for a donation for his hospitality-he was a bum sleeping in the building we were in. We
said no, and he immediately told mom that he saw her taking pictures, grabbed her arm and said he was taking us to the police. We argued with him and got away as soon as possible. He says its punishable by up to 3 years in jail. We knew you weren’t supposed to take pictures, and didn’t know the punishment, so mom was a little scared. We wound our way through the back alleys and finally lost the bum, thank goodness. Then it was time for a little shopping. Everything was pretty expensive, and prices in all of the fabric stores seemed to be fixed. I tried telling people it was too much, and no one was willing to haggle which shocked me. Then, after checking around, I realized that all of the prices were pretty much the same, so I gave in and decided to buy. I ended up buying 3 saris from one store for around $7 each, and they were beautiful. I wanted more, but decided to wait and look elsewhere. I know that I don’t need any more, but they are all just so beautiful. I also found a cute outfit for around $10 that I
couldn’t pass up. After getting all of our lodging and transportation for the week for around $36 per person, I thought things would be cheaper. Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places, but oh well, its still cheap enough. Back to the hostel for some garlic cheese nan, out for one last stroll before dark, and then home for the evening. Before bed, we both took showers. I’m hoping that it was not ganges water, but it sure smelled like it. I think I maybe stunk more after the shower than before, but that’s India I guess. We had a great room at the hostel, but there were two lizards running all around and I was sure one was going to climb in my mouth while I slept. In the morning, we went up for a chocolate pancake breakfast. Sounds great, but it was indian, so not so much. I managed to choke down half, and that was all I could take. After breakfast we ventured down to the ghats to find a row boat and driver to take us for a little cruise up the river. I’m just so amazed at the activity in the ganges. It is
basically an open sewer with corpses in it, yet people bathe, wash clothes, swim and even drink the water. Our boat driver even leaned out of the boat when he got hot and took a big drink. I didn’t even put a toe in it. Wandering through the alleys and down the road to shop was fun for me. I just can’t resist the sari shops. All of the clothing is just so beautiful, and such a contrast from the disgusting surroundings. It looks like women are walking around in evening gowns through the dump. After heading back to the hostel for a quick coke, it was time to head to the train station for our overnight train to Agra. We wanted to get there in time, so we left way too early and had to sit at the station for 2 hours. That was pretty miserable. It was packed with people, rats were crawling everywhere and the ground we had to sit on has surely been covered with pee or worse in the recent past… Oh and the flies were everywhere. Luckily the train was on time again, and we were off.
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