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Holy bananas, I haven't blogged since camp! (Broken phone is to blame) we rely on technology too much but as times are changing and developing at home in Australia more and more everyday, India is still yet very far behind but not only with technology their culture is still very old.
Back to being Holy & eating bananas, since camp so much has happened! We caught the train to Kerala, stayed there for a night and due to unfortunate circumstances of the human body we unable to attend Allepy and our night on the backwaters. But instead visited an Indian doctor, who initially directed me into a psychologist, after revealing why i was there i was kindly redirected to the right doctor who prescribed me some antibiotics and I soldiered on. In Kerala other than being sticky messes in the sauna felt days we took another train to Chennai. we only hoped for a smooth trip but who were we kidding! Of course we ended up sprinting up the platform because we were up the complete wrong end and the trains here are over a kilometer long, sweat was pouring off us both by this stage, but things didn't seem to improve at all I shared a berth with an Indian family that wasn't the the problem! The problem was the light beaming into my eyes at 2am when the baby cried and wanted food and nappy change. They did turn it off after I pulled the sheet over my face a tad unhappy. Once we arrived in Chennai we waited and waited.. Yep and waited for our driver who never arrived, also conveniently failed to call. We ended up taking a rickshaw to our hotel to find the driver with a flat tyre. That's was all fine then we were shown our room, that's when Chennai hit the real bad books! It was cockroach infested, human hair everywhere, scummiest bathroom, wifi conveniently unavailable & worst of all no set top box! So we made a fast exit to hunt for a new home for the next two nights and was rather picky at this stage as we had another bad train experience and then the hotel we kind of wanted to spoil ourselves 10,000rs later we did! We had wifi, clean sheets and really it was fancy. We took a day trip the following day to Pondicherry nice day, not a whole lot to report there other than an awesome meal!
Varanasi was our next stop, we were both looking forward to that! Varanasi being very famous for the 'ganges' and exploring the life and death rituals in the most fascinating holy city, become a very quick favorite on our adventure so far. We took a boat in the evening sunset along the Ganges which is to many a bathing place but to me as interesting as it was seeing bodies burnt in the ghats on the banks and bones flicked in to the water, and bodies tied to stone of they didn't meet the particular requirements on being burnt (ie. Under 5, pregnant, leprosy etc) then tossed of the end of the boat into the Ganges centre, but I'm also led to believe that holy river is connected to sewage, yet this water to them is so clean? Or is it a bath, a bin, a highway, art gallery, crematorium, sewer, a hangout, a workplace or a temple?
In the evenings on a daily basis they have the ceremony where they all gather and place music and spin fire and really the show is lovely sitting in the boat in the river watching it from a far, lighting a lotus candle and letting it float away. We also went on the sunrise boat trip in the morning 5am we rose and shone and even managed to witness a human skull, creeped me out a little. I also got to roe the boat which was actually alot harder than it looks (I'm sure Rach would agree.)
We of course went and saw temples and historic lands marks but what also really stood out in Varanasi is 'Blue Lassi' amazing little crevasse in the wall that has the best lassis! Thank you lonely planet for the recommendation! Also apologies to the poor skinny little man thy peddled his rickshaw up the steep hill for us, seemed it was a struggle!
Next stop is Agra! Last train and thank god for that.....
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Rachael Hawkins bout time you posted a new one!