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Published: March 16th 2006
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Well as mentioned before - no more champagne backpacking for us as we no longer have a personal driver and as we arrive at Agra train station, come back British Rail - all is forgiven, well almost everything, the only plus side is I cant see any train spotters with their thermos flasks and cheese and pickle sandwiches…
After a wee wait our train eventually arrives, well we hope it’s our train as we nearly got on the last one that was on the same platform. To be honest when we arrive at our bunks it’s not as bad as I thought it would be - a little cramped maybe but not too shabby. During the night we managed to get a little sleep but not exactly the standard eight hours as we were a wee bit paranoid about missing our stop and as this is apparently one of the worst trains to be robbed on - that certainly didnae help.
After a pretty uneventful night we arrive at Varanasi train station where we are met by our hotel rep - we may no longer have a personal driver but we’re not thumbing it just yet. We are taken to our
final hotel of the package deal and from here we will have to find our own accommodation, our final hotel in India is called - yep you guessed it - Hotel India, I bet they were up all night thinking that name up - very imaginative indeed. On first impressions the hotel seemed very nice but as we were shown to our room I could help but feel we were being ushered around the back if you know what I mean, especially as the carpets ran out and we started going passed offices - never a good sign and unfortunately our suspicions were confirmed when we saw the room. It wasn’t too bad but it certainly didn’t fit in with the rest of the hotel and unfortunately Suzanne became mosquito fodder during the night - little sods…
The next morning we were picked up once again at stupid o’clock but this time it had nothing to do with tigers but too watch the sunrise over the river and around the very religious ghats… I should also point out that Varanasi is one of the holiest cities in India with lots of temples, mosques and ghats which are religious buildings by
the way and from the river you can see many of them with all the followers bathing in the “religious” water - now bearing in mind this is where dead bodies are thrown in the river to wash downstream, including people as well as cows, I’m not convinced just how holy this water is… I don’t think I’ll be going for a swim anyway… Watching all the different boats out on the river this is definitely the touristy thing to do in Varanasi and from the various group size’s I think our rower was pretty lucky it was just the two of us….
After the boat cruise was finished we had a city sight seeing tour to go which we didn’t even know about, and to be honest as the tour included - more temples we could have done without it to be honest. However and I never thought I’d be glad to see a French Diplomat but due to the French President being in town and several people doing a tour of the city, this closed a lot of the temples and museums to the public - maybe next time I guess… One temple we did manage to go
to was the Monkey temple - yep you guesses it again, they worship monkeys and as Suzanne found out the monkeys certainly don’t like sharing their food...
That night we changed rooms and finished off our package tour with once again another rooftop meal and a bottle of wine for in the morning we get another train and head north towards Gorakhpur and then hopefully to Nepal and Mount Everest - I cant wait…
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