Pilgrims often arrive in the holy city of Varanasi on foot. Tourists usually arrive by air or by road. A few travellers arrive by boat. These two grey-haired brothers, determined to be travellers rather than tourists, were among those latter few! In the late 1960s, one of the finest travel writers of all time, the late Eric Newby, wrote a book* describing how he and his wife Wanda set out by boat to cruise the entire length of the River Ganges. Travelling in a variety of unstable vessels, their journey was more treacherous and slower than they'd imagined, but it was absolutely fascinating nonetheless. One critic rightly observed that the book's pages contained 'all the exasperating charm, dusty enchantment and recurrent dottiness of India'. Perhaps it was my reading of those same pages long ago which
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