holy city...

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spent three days in varanasi... more than enough ;-) i believe it is one of the oldest cities and you can tell, tonnes of character... the main attraction was to walk up and down the ghats (basically steps leading down into the ganges river (maa ganga, mother river)... these ghats are used for many things from bathing to laundry to religious rituals to burning of corpses...

the burning ghat was pretty special to see, a good opportunity for contemplating death and our impermanent nature... it was not possible to take photo's of these ghats, understandably, as they are very holy...

i had a room right on one of the ghats with a balcony that overlooked maa ganga and the rising sun, a shared room with my aussie mate that i paid all of 1.50$us per night for... pretty cool... other than this though it was nice to get out of varanasi as soon as possible... the 'streets' around the ghats were barely big enough for two people but ofter were shared by people, bicycles, motorcycles, cows, etc... they were also pretty much filled with faeces, you definately had to watch your step but this applies to much of india much of the time...

i had a 24hr train ride to get to my next destination which you will be privy to in my next blog ;-)...

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Photos

a view up the ganga...
a view of the ghats running along the mother ganges...

varanasi street...
a fairly typical street near the ghats in varanasi, except this one is quite quiet ;-)...