Hilary's Adventure: Day 7: Train to Varanasi

Today is Alex’s birthday and the whole reason we are in India. So he started out his day with a train ride to Varanasi. The night before we ate some of the pineapple sugar lollies instead of having a birthday cake. Kyle gave Alex a book on making decisions that he seemed quite interested in.

I woke up at about 7am when other people started moving about to get off at the station Lucknow. After waking up and remembering I was in a train I went to brave to toilets. This was not a totally unpleasant experience but if you can avoid it do so. On a carriage there is normally 4 toilets, 2 at each end and 1 of those 4 is a ‘western’ toilet so not a squat toilet. I happened to get lucky and be at the end with a western toilet. The toilet didn’t smell because everything and I mean everything just drops away onto the train tracks, they were not very clean but had toilet paper which is always a bonus in India. At about 10am they boys woke up and I discovered the window I was sleeping under leaks and my pillow was all wet. Apparently it had rained steadily from about 5am. I remember seeing it and hearing it but didn’t think anything of it.

Our train was due to arrive at Varanasi about 12pm but we didn’t get there till about 1.30 because with all the rain the tracks flooded and we had to wait till it drained.

Once we got off the train we waited for the driver from the hotel to come and pick us up like we had arranged. We couldn’t find him so we just got in a rickshore that took us as far as he could. Again the rain was a problem. The rickshore drivers were saying we would have to wade in water up to our knees to the hotel because he couldn’t make it in the water. So we got directions from the driver once he got as far as he could. The directions seemed simple take a left then a right then right then straight and it should be about 15min walk. I think we walked about 30 to 45min before we got to the hotel but the bonus was there was no water to wade through. The rickshore driver would not have fitted down all the narrow streets anyway.

The hotel is right on the Ganges overlooking nothing but water and the other bank. We have a room with a view, private balcony and A/C. It is costing us a bit more like $20AUD each a night but so worth it. For Alex’s birthday we were going to take a boat ride down the Ganges but because it monsoon season the Ganges is too high and flowing way too fast for the boats. There are no boats out on the water, only tired up waiting for the water to go down. We will have to come back another time to do the boat rides because it will not go down for weeks.

Once we dropped off our stuff in the room and cooled down we went to the restaurant in the hotel for some lunch. It was nothing that interesting; everywhere seems to have the same stuff for food. As we were sitting down I asked whether the hotel was on the water and moving or if it was just me. It turns out it was just me and I still feel like I’m on the train and moving. Hopefully it will go down after tonight and some sleep. The moving is making it hard to concentrate and making me feel a little sick.

I went back to the room for a little lie down while to boys went off to get lost (again) in Varanasi.

I was starting to feel better so while the boys were off exploring I had my hand painted with henna. The hotel we are staying at arranged it for me. The girl seems to be a local or maybe a daughter of a worker in the hotel. She didn’t speak much English and was completely uninterested in what she was doing. She spent the whole time sighing with a disinterested look on her face. The paint comes from a pre-package squishy cone shape that goes down to a very fine tip. I think the designs are thought up on the spot from traditional drawings. My left hand looks better than the right. The right hand is much thicker and not as defined. As I was going to pay her I smudged some it, bugger.

While I have being painted the boys came back from their adventure. They found the burning Ghats. This is where they burn the bodies and send them off down the Ganges in a funeral ritual. The 3 of us are off to have a look tomorrow because I want to have a look too.

After my hands had dried we put on bug be gone stuff and spent the evening talking, laughing on our private balcony in Varanasi. Just the way Alex wanted to finish his birthday.