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Hi again everyone, finally found some time to get to a computer. So its been a week or so since our last update and things have gotten better and better, so ill try an pick up where we left off.
We had a really nice 13hr sleeper train from Agra to Varanassi, it was on time and it actually arrived 3 hours earlier than expected. Varanassi was great, it was quite the mission to find our hotel though, as the area in which we stayed was like a maze. The 'streets', which are only walkways were quite hard to navigate in the beginning, but luckily a young boy, the first local in India who generally wanted to help us an not rip us off, walked with us for about 15 minutes til we got to out hostel. I gave the young fella 5 rupees, he was stoked. As soon as we arrived we began making new friends, there was much more of a social environment here and people seemed much more relaxed then in Agra and Delhi, and were keen to share stories and have a chat. We had dinner and brekky with our new mate Andrea from Switzerland, and also had a nice dinner date with a lovely couple from Manchester, Alex and Amy. Hopefully we will meet up with these guys in Nepal. Varanassi was quite hot and sticky, they had a massive flood there about 2 days before we arrived, and the Ganga (Ganges River) was flowing extremely fast and was quite high. As a result the town was very dirty. We spent our time walking through the bazaars and to the ghats, where the locals bathed, swam, washed clothes, washed their cows and where all the sewage from the 500+ towns along the river ended up....yuck! the water is septic, there is no oxygen in the water! there are cows everywhere! they live in the hugely populated alley ways, there are cow "bombs" everywhere! Varanassi is a holy place, and the mother Ganga is a place where people are cremated on the banks or buried in the river. We got to see the whole process of a Hindu burial, from the family carrying the body through the streets to the body being fully ablaze in front of us, burning human bodies stink! We were lucky enough to get the keeper of the eternal flame at the ghat, take us up onto his home roof and explain the whole process of the ceremony and the hinhu religion.
On our last morning in Varanassi we got up at 4.30am to do a river boat trip. The boat was made from timber and was probably 100 years old, everytime they restarted the motor they had to wind it up to get it cranking, but she was a sterdy vessel and we didnt get a drop of Ganga juice on us. We saw a fantastic sunrise, and got to see river life at its fullest, with hundreds of locals lining up at differant ghats to bath and wash as the sun came up. We meet another couple from NZ, Steve an Holly, who hopefully we will also meet in Nepal. We just chilled out for the rest of the day, as we had to catch a train from a train station 16km from Varanassi at 9.30 pm. The whole process of this train ride was an absolute nightmare, the rickshaw ride to the train station consisted of flogged out road from the floods, massive pot holes, dust, mud, stagnant water, and a s*** load of trucks. we had so many near misses with the trucks, the road was quite narrow in some places from all the rain damage. Anyway we get to the station at about 7.30, earlier than we expected, but we didnt mind, not until we found out our train was late. We met some reallly nice Germans, Francine, Karina and Klaus on the platform, and we sat together for a few hours watching the hundreds and hundreds of rats playing on the train tracks. We finally board our train at 1.30am, 6 hours after arriving at the station, get into our budget sleeper cart, to find that there are atleast double the amount of people on our train to seat ratio, there were 12 people crammed into our 6 person berth, and shooing them away was not so easy. Tarz got her bed fairly quickly, but I was stuck with 3 adults and a kid sitting on my bed til about 3am, didnt get much sleep. During the day we made friends with the Indian blokes in our carriage, they were all soldiers heading for Sikkim. They, like all Indian men are interested in white women...ie Tara. They were harmless, pretty good blokes actually. We arrive at New Jalpaiguri station at bout 7pm, quickly meet up with our new German friends and get a shared taxi to Siliguri, 6 people, 6 big bags, 6 little bags and a driver, all crammed into a mini van the same as a suzuki carry, very squishy! We muck around a bit in Siliguri, eventually getting a share Jeep to darjeeling, we arrive at our destination at about midnight! Our 30 or so hour mission to Darjeeling was complete! Our next mission was to find accomodation. ulike any of the other towns we had been to Darjeeling is deffinately the quitest! we struggled to find anywhere with lights on, eventually someone opened up and we negotiated 400 rupees a night. when we looked at the rooms they were the worst by far we have stayed in, filthy dirty barthroom, no shower, unflushing squat toilet, and everything in the room was damp. We were so tired though we didn't care, we slept like logs!
Keep posted for our update on Darjeeling, Tarz and Fatty xo
- comments
Aunty T Oh guys it sounds like you are having the time of your lives. Feel a bit sorry for you sleeping in that dump.. Lol... Keep the blogs up as I love love reading them.. Were all great here, love to you both, love Tania, Paul, Maddison and Jake xo
Kathy Davey Hi "my little intrepid travellers", looks like you are seeing the real India now!! Everyone is fine here, no computer yet, using yours. Stay safe, love you. mum xx