Varanasi, page 1 of 4

Varanasi

One of the couple of hunderd 'Ghats' of Varanasi.When you take the night train from Agra to Varanasi we advise you to check in advance which train to take exactly. I was convinced it would take about 8 hours to cover the 600 kilometers from Agra to Varanasi, but alas, when we hurried to leave the train after 8 hours (and we were quite happy with this!), we found out we were not even halfway.  I got very suspicious when I found out we were in Faizabur, which is in the middle of Uttar Pradesh and would be more on our way when we were traveling to Nepal already than now, when we wanted to go much more South… Eventually the whole trip took us 17 hours, so two times longer than expected.

Jacques is exhausted...But this travel gave me a chance to build up my own experiences with monkeys. At last – it was already past 12 o’clock while we thought we would be out of the train by 7 o’clock - we decided it would be better to take something to eat. So Jacques daringly ordered a sandwich from one of the million sellers that entered the train to sell tea (‘Chai, Chai…’ endlessly), coke, sandwiches etc. He didn’t exactly got sandwiches, but we didn’t mind too much anymore after 13 hours on this train (and two hours waiting on the station). Cows walking on the rails in a major station...We were standing still on a station that was inhabited by monkeys, very entertaining. At least, I found them very entertaining till one of them with a very sneaky, quick movement took my sandwich or whatever it was – he didn’t seem to mind so much. One moment I was admiring him from quite a distance and the next moment he put his arm through these prison-like bars and took my sandwich! I am still shocked! The rest of the train was very much amused, including Jacques I have to say…

Except apes we also saw cows on the rails, Ice-cream! (We tourists can't eat this, I found out the hard way during previous travels that you really better stay clear of all kind of icecream and icecubes!)walking in between the rails in the middle of the station, and not only in the minor stations! Of course all this entertainment was very welcome, the sights from the train were kind of boring, always the same flat landscape and it almost looked like Holland! And when you travel 4 hours you’re out of Holland, any way you go. This is not the case in India, which is big like Europe!

After 17 hours of sitting on hard, extremely dirty benches we arrived in Varanasi. We were completely covered with dirt and looked with admiration at the more experienced (Indian) travelers, who managed with all kind of Ganges, are that high hanging baskets meant as nests for bees to get honey?precautions to step of the train completely fresh and clean! It took a little more trouble than usually to find a hotel, Varanasi was very full. We found a good hotel with garden a little outside the city, everything accompanied by the normal troubles with touts and their own ideas. But by now we knew much better how to deal with this kind of problems. Just prepare everything very well beforehand, have telephone numbers and addresses of a couple of hotels you like ready and don’t listen to anything your driver(s) declare. Sorry to say this, but it works well.

We went to eat in the hotel, in a restaurant that was located in a small, not very impressive looking building perpendicular on the main building. The garden was in between. We ordered beer, but it took half an hour waiting till we got it. A waiter was going to get it somewhere outside. He wasn't very lucky, because in the meanwhile rain started to pour out of the sky. All lights in the hotel went out, but they had a spare generator for this event, so we had a small amount of light. After some time the light went on again, but all air-conditioning and other heavyA cow in the middle of the street, a very familiar sight by now. electrical devices tried to start working instantaneously and this was too much for the system. So the lights went out again. After some time this sequence repeated itself and now the power seemed somewhat more stable, so we watched the whole hotel flashing on and off while trying to restore the power. It looked like a haunted house in a bad movie! During our diner we had plenty of opportunity to watch this phenomenon again and again. Very entertaining. In Agra we had already some problems with power dips, but from Varanasi on it got worse and worse.

I'm sorry, only thee on the moment please!At last we got our beers, very lucky for us in this holy city. The waiter who got it for us popped up the following days wherever we were sitting, on the veranda or in the garden, asking hopefully if he could serve us some beer! Only in hotels you can find some alcohol and we learned later on that a permit to sell alcohol was very expensive and also getting one was very expensive because of all the people you had to pay. I’m sorry to say India has a bit of a corrupt system. People themselves complain a lot about it, but seem unable to change it.


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