City of Shiva

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Hello folks, Clare here.
Oh my God, your God, everybodys' God. That was a journey that you would not want to do everyday - or ever again. 15 hours on a train from Agra to Varanasi, the ancient city of the God Shiva.
We had lost one of our sleeping bags at the airport in Delhi, so we both had to share a bunk in the freezing cold of night. It was about 5 foot long and 2 wide (and no, we haven't lost any weight yet ), so saying cramped and uncomfortable would be a massive understatement. However we've made it here in one piece with about a hundred lessons learned.
The city is situated along the banks of the holy river Ganges. Hindus come here from all over India to bathe, a ritual that washes away all sins. That's all very well and good, but when you consider the water is completely septic and potent with raw sewage, you begin to favour a trip to Lourdes...
We had phoned ahead to book a guesthouse and were very smug with our travel-savy as we had secured the last room. The hotel comes very highly recommended and after a bit of a detour we arrived at a busy, sunny establishment right on the riverside. Too good to be true ? It was. No wonder it was the last room, it probably hadn't been rented out since Shiva himself checked in for a bit of kip!
The room was a small and dirty concrete box. No glass in the windows, just badly fixed cardboard. There were holes in the door and the window frame looked as if it might disintegrate if you so much as breathed on it. The bedding was tatty and there were suspicious brown handprints and smears over the walls. There were loads of creepy crawlies and a few lizards running amok; they had obviously commandeered the place and were none to pleased with us showing up... the queue for the bathroom in the morning, us accidently killing their dinner... it just wasn't big enough for the 50 or so of us. So last in, first out, we decided to do the honourable thing and leave them to it. The hotel owners were brilliant though and even minded our luggage while we searched for another place.
So here's us in a lovely wee guesthouse in the old part of Varanasi, drinking very lovely milky coffees and thanking our lucky stars. Tomorrow we go exploring.

As before, photos to follow !

Clare & Gareth

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