Melanie and Gavin's Travels

Varanasi - INDIA as I'd hoped.

Wow, Day 2 in this country is going a lot better than Day 1! We figured it would, but that is always a relief. After killing time at the internet cafe we only had one hour to wait at the train station. When we first went in I was surprised to see the hundreds of people sleeping there waiting for trains, no Melanie they are the homeless.... Although quite a lot were waiting for trains too.

When our train came into the station I was very relieved we had booked seats in the sleeper class. The masses who crushed into each other in the cheap seats deserves a video Gavin and I figure. They were trying to crawl through the windows! We managed to get some sleep, we were on upper berths and I felt very safe. I was cold though and need to buy a blanket to go with my sleep sheet since we sent our sleeping bags home.

The train arrived in Varanasi just before 5am. We caught an autorickshaw 15minutes to the old town. They tried to get us to stay at their hotel of course, but we just wanted to see the sunrise over the Ganges. With some help we found our way through the old winding streets in the dark to the river of life (and death) and a place held so holy by so many people here. Within a short while the sun started to rise and the river came to life. It was amazing, really like I had hoped and thought it would be! The best time of day to rent a boat and float along to witness it all is in the morning apparently, we are waiting until we are rested but there were dozens of foreigners doing it. I don't know where all the tourists came from, we hadn't seen any until that point! The Indians wash their clothes and the body in the dirty river, men in their brief underwear and not a care in the world. It's pretty neat to see. The buildings are hundreds of years old and are crawling with monkeys, cows remained sleeping outside and you had to be careful where you walked due to their morning 'offerings' shall we say.

After a few hours we found a hotel, had a long nap, a shower to wash 2 days of travelling dirt off of me, and now find ourselves rested on a rooftop terrace with a lovely view beyond us. I think we will wait until tomorrow to resume exploring the sights though.

posted by melaniewilkes @ 10:05 PM