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Varanasi blog 2.
It's difficult writing a blog post when you're so many cities ahead of the one you're writing about. By now attitudes have changed and expectations are different so your mind seems to remember things as they should be with all the new information included, instead of how everything really was.
So it is with Varanasi. We thought we had to do another post on this city as it has left a mark on us that will forever be a benchmark for many things in future.
Varanasi is the first place we have visited where you get used to something, go to bed and wake up totally freaked out again at the same thing. Example: the ride back from town to the train station was bewildering and stupefying. I have never used the word "stupefying" before as there was just no context where it felt like a good fit. I now find the true understanding of "stupefying" as one of Varanasi's gifts to me. Stupefying is when you see something you have seen before (exactly the same) and feel the exact same feelings of speechlessness and awe and total sensory overload as you did the first time. "I was stupefied" - yes, for the first time in my life that feels like a good-fit sentence.
So as stupefied as we were about the sights, sounds and smells (oh how all clichés will lose their meaning in the day to day life after this trip!) of Varanasi, it seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. Every discovery of something interesting, quiet or delicious felt like yours to keep in this chaos that seemed to stretch your mind like an elastic band and then release it suddenly to snap back to give you a little sting at the back of your brain.
We hope the photos and video (upcoming as we find the right soundtrack to match it) will give you some of our experiences. I wish for everyone to find their Varanasi at some point in life. And if you already have one, I hope these words and pictures take you back there and make you smile, as that is the lasting thing I do when thinking of Varanasi, I smile.
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