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Whitneys on Tour
We left the hell hole of Agra and caught an overnight train to Varanasi with what remained of our tour group.
This was to be a whistle stop one day visit to Varanasi as we had to get back to Delhi for the 25th to catch our flight. This day although very hectic was alot of fun as Varanasi is the most chaotic place we have yet seen (and we've seen a fair few of those!).
We arrived at our hotel from the train and pretty much straight away took a cycle rickshaw to go and see the river Ganges. The 45 minute journey was hilarious and the traffic unbelievable. Not just car traffic you understand, but car, rickshaw, motorbike, cycle rickshaw, cycle AND cattle traffic all mish-moshed into one to create total havoc. This city truly was the third world of the third world.
When we arrived we had a quick 30 minute look at the Ganges but fortunately didn't see any dead bodies floating in the river as you can do here we're told. They bury their dead in the Ganges here so the river isn't the cleanest in the world to put it very mildly.
Then we took another lunatic jouney back to the hotel to join our tour group for an afternoon visit to Buddhist temples and a museum. Then it was another goodbye to our tour leader and some more of our tour group as we left the tour 5 days early. See our write up from Jaipur to explain why!
We then headed to the train station for a 13 hour journey to Delhi which miraculously arrived on time. We never wanted to go to Delhi in the first place and had no interest in seeing it as it's got an Agra type reputatation. We met up with some of our original tour group who came straight here from Agra, used their hotel facilities to shower etc, then had lunch and headed straight for the airport, bound for Bangkok. Not much to say about Delhi really!
So thats it then for our six week journey of India, a country which amazes, frustrates and disgusts in equal measure. All the bad things you hear about India are true and then some. It really is filthy, squalid and polluted just about everywhere. The heat is overwhelming and the service everywhere is shockingly slow and the unbelievably inefficient people equally so. If you did a time and motion study on the people here it would make truly comical reading. As for the constant staring you receive (particulalrly if you are a woman)and touts and hawkers who won't leave you the hell alone, lets not go there.
But do you know what, we LOVED it here and we're really sorry to leave. By some astute planning and the fact that we had to endure plenty of 3rd world conditions in South America beforehand the filth didn't overly bother us. South India and it's beaches are fabulous and you couldn't find more chilled out places if you tried. The north is truly fascinating and you can't take your eyes off the street life. Yes, the people do frustrate somewhat but many are very kind and if you lived in such poor conditions it's hardly surprising people resort to such desperate measures so often and their service ineptitude can be truly hilarious sometimes. The food is wonderful, we're gonna miss those curries for sure. Additionally we met some great people on our North India trip which made that tour so much fun and a real pleasant an unexpected surprise is that we didn't get ill once, thanks to our vegetarian diet and our 'wonder' drug Dukoral.
Now it's onto South East Asia.
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