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We boarded our luxury cruise liner (HA!), a four person long row boat with no standing room, 2 rowers and only just enough room for our bags! We were to spend 2 days rowing down the River Ganges, and it was to be the most relaxing and peaceful part of our entire trip. The days before the boat trip we were extremely nervous about it, about 5 of us had only recently got very sick (and not the kind of sickness you want on a row boat if you know what I mean). We had all taken way more Immodium than is recommended, after filling our heads with images of resorting to leaning over the rowboat with our pants down to relieve ourselves. That wasn’t in the brochure! But we were all fine. We spent the whole day reading, sleeping, chatting, sleeping and then when we got tired from doing all of that, we slept some more. At lunchtime, we stopped in the middle of the Ganges as the cooks had prepared for us a delicious Indian meal; potato curry, daal bhat (lentils - my new favourite thing), veges and other yummy things. We continued rowing (well, the rowers did, we
just slept) until dusk where we off loaded the boats and set up camp. We had tiny 2 people tents, and our toilet? The sand. We walked for ages just to keep ourselves out of view from the rest of the group, dug a hole, and went for it. Nice. We had a huge dinner, including fries, and omg I have never seen so many people leap at food before. We had only had 4 or 5 days without Western food! Too funny. That night was loooong. It was so hot, I would open the tent flap to let the breeze in, then the girl I was sharing the tent with would close it because she was scared that the wild dogs would get in our tent. Frustrating much? It wasn’t until the next morning we learned that the tents had air vents on all sides. Dammit. We woke up earlier than is natural the next morning and started off again towards Varanasi. We arrived on land around 2pm and took a car to the city. Varanasi is the most sacred city in all of Hinduism, the place where hundreds of people bathe in the Ganges, and the only place
you can burn the bodies of the dead 24 hours a day. Everywhere else along the Ganges you can burn the dead from sunrise to sunset. We had so much fun in Varanasi, the first night we headed to the main ghat along the waterfront and got in boat to watch the religious ceremony that was going on. We lit candles to make a wish and send them off into the Ganges but it was so windy that the flame went out before even touching the water. How awkward. We ended up re-doing this ceremony the following night, we made our wishes and watched them float down the river. The next morning we woke before dawn (ew) and jumped on a boat to watch the sunrise over Varanasi. It’s so beautiful in the morning without millions of other tourists like us! The guy who was rowing our boat was wearing a cotton skirt thing, and nothing else which we unfortunately noticed time and time again when the wind picked up. We spent the whole day shopping, we were first taken to a cotton factory, and learnt all the different ways to colour the fabric, make patterns on the fabric, all
in the most intense and enthusiastic detail from the owner of the shop. We wandered through the streets for the rest of the day, and organised a henna session for later on that night. The henna lady was meant to arrive at our hotel at 7. 8 o clock came and we were slightly angry, but we were already used to ‘India time,’ which basically means, don’t hold your breath. We spoke to the guys in reception who called her and said, oh she is waiting for you and her house, we’ll take you there. So we followed this teeny Indian woman through the backstreets at dark, dodging random cows and bulls which by the way were the biggest damn cows I have ever seen in my life. We met the henna lady who invited us into her home and had her sister give us henna tattoos. I’m guessing she was practicing on us, the other lady was telling her to do this, and don’t do that. They kept pointing at us and saying stuff in Hindi and then laughing their heads off, clearly at our expense. It’s so awkward when you know someone is making fun of you right
to your face but you don’t know what they’re saying! The sister only spoke French and because we could speak a little French (and by a little I mean like 3 sentences), she tried to teach us more French. So we were in the middle of India with Hindu ladies learning French. As you do. The henna tattoos took about an hour each to finish, and we had to wait a further hour to let it dry before washing it off. As we couldn’t wear shoes while waiting for it to dry, we had to walk back to our hotel barefoot, trying to miss the potholes, cow dung, spit, rubbish and god knows what else! But our feet looked amazing so totally worth the effort! The next day we started our drive to Nepal, 13 hours squished in a car with no air conditioning. But I’ll save that story for my next post.
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isobel
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great :)
great blog - very inspirational when deciding what to do while in india!