Varanasi

In our previous blog post, https://neuage.me/lahore-delhi/,we discussed our journey crossing the Wagah Border from Pakistan to India, including our visits to Amritsar and Delhi, as well as a train journey between these two cities. This narrative commences with the train ride on the New Delhi-Varanasi route.

• The next train, the Rajdhani, left NDLS (New Delhi main station) at 11.25 pm to Varanasi, arriving at 11pm. 

We had 1AC again, and our own cabin. This time food was part of the deal. Lots of snacks, 2 courses of lunch and dinner. The first course was tomato soup out of a packet. It was yum. The second course a little too spicy but OK. I slept in the afternoon, still a bit cold but I wrapped myself up.

The Executive Class (EC) cabin we had on the train was one of only two cabins with a single bunk. When booking first-class, there is typically only one out of about twenty cars that have first-class cabins. Among these cabins, only two offer single bunks while the rest have double bunks accommodating four passengers. Cabin assignments are determined by a computer system, and the seating chart is usually made available a few hours before departure. Throughout our three-month journey, we stayed in two single bunk cabins, three double bunk cabins, and a few triple bunk cabins, after realizing that first class was fully booked well in advance. And continues with our stay in the ‘holy’ city of Varanasi.

Narda in italics Terrell not,

Varanasi 13 March

We used the Ola app to get a taxi, only to find we had summoned a tuk-tuk. It was a bit squashed, Terrell’s suitcase basically on the back of his head. The driver was careful. 

He dropped us off at the entrance of what turned out to be a huge warren of narrow streets, big enough for motorbikes but not tuk-tuks. So, we tried following our GPS. It was impossible, as the narrow street made the GPS connection very imprecise. An hour later in the dark after asking for directions many times we called the hotel. She asked us to put her onto a local, who then led us to where we were supposed to be. Oh well. We arrived at 1 am

We left our flat at Rohini, Delhi, @ 8.45 on Wednesday morning. Even only one stop from the end of the Yellow Line the train is often full by the time it gets to (this was in our previous blog) our station. With suitcases, the only way to get a seat was to go back to a stop and hop on there. Luckily, we grabbed a seat and by the time we got our stop the train was full. By the time we got to the train station thirteen stops later we were almost gasping for air in the overcrowded metro. It is a very efficient metro running a train every few minutes but still not enough to fit everyone in. But then again all of India is like this.

We paid about USD $5 for an hour in the first-class lounge at the Delhi train station. It was OK, got some food cheaply.

Their claim, “The new state of art executive lounge aims to provide all services and facilities required for comfortable wait for the passengers during pre-departures and post arrivals. The lounge has been designed on the looks of airport lounges with much more space and a serene environment with full security.” Not sure if I agree with all or any of that but from what we have seen at train stations, it was OK. They had a full buffet for not much money, but we were not hungry and gave it a miss. It was about two bucks for the hour with coffee included.

Our train left twenty minutes late which for a twelve-hour rain ride is quite good. The cabin was quite good. They fed us, not quite sure what the food was but it was vegetarian, and filling though spicy as Indian food is – and rice of course. The attendant was annoying and came on strong for a tip at the end of the trip. I think we gave him a hundred rupees which sounds like a lot but in reality is a buck twenty USD. ‘Good luck with that mate.’ Narda likes these long train rides more than me. I tend not to sleep but it is interesting. Not a lot different than Amtrak that we took last year for twenty-four hours from Chicago to Washington DC. That train ride was a bit terrible in that they sounded their horn every few minutes the whole trip. I did not sleep for any of that trip. https://youtu.be/FVKC8HFBzvg?si=GP7Fy5l0aLIlTl-z

We got off the train during their ten-minute stops throughout the night getting into Varanasi at eleven pm. As usual too many people were about the station with us trying to figure out how to get to where we were going. I always find this the most insecure and difficult part of a trip. Arriving at any train station in India, and worse at night, with people begging, hustling to drive us somewhere, anywhere and us not quite sure of where we are going. This time we thought we would try Ola, a ride-share app like Uber (our Uber app stopped working last time we were in India and we have never been able to get it up and running again). We thought we had ordered a car as we knew our stuff would not fit into a tuk tuk – we were wrong we did fit. Barely. Riding through crowded streets close to midnight with trucks, cars, and yes cows in the middle of the road all clamouring for the same space is a thrill to have once but not as many times as we have.

Forty-five minutes later we got dropped off at a narrow lane as the tuk tuk could not go any further. We were told it was not far, take a right, or was it a left? Go past a few other lanes then go some direction to another lane and so on. Frustrated and worried, the lanes were dark, and everyone looked scary to us – when you are 76 years old with luggage (expensive camera, laptop, designer underwear…) it is easy to feel vulnerable when in a dark alley in a city never been in before – and having no idea which way to go. We even ended up past the same shops three or four times. Oh yes, of course, use the phone’s GPS. Yeah right! Thanks, Google for getting us to go around the same alley too many times saying we were only five minutes away then suddenly it is ten minutes away then back to seven…bloody Google. After midnight with us in a bit of panic we were able to get through to the place where we were staying and after hijacking a couple to assist us we were on our way. The couple we enlisted guided us to our to the alley where our lodging was. Of course, we had already gone past this lane three or four times and good old Google never said go left.

Ram Bhawan Residency was fine for us. We wanted a larger room and got moved into it the next morning. A four-floor building in a traditional style in the historical area near Dashashwamedh Ghat.

Here we are at Ram Bhawan Residency. A very pleasant Haveli with nice rooms, a breakfast area where we are fed at 9 am each day, with lots of stimulating conversations with other travellers. It was worth it. We are sleeping well, despite this cold which we have now had for a couple of weeks. 

Lovely walks along the Ganges.

Their ad said, ‘with a terrace with a wonderful view of the river and the city’. The view is when going to the rooftop and seeing between buildings there is a glimpse of the river. From our window we could see the sun rising in between buildings. Whoopie!

Our bit of footage on Varanasi https://youtu.be/7ILSESx8yIY?si=9b5RdudgxpfMkrbP

There is a sense that we are back to the 1960’s hippie yoga hangouts… of course this was a part of the hippie trail (damn! missed that one I stayed in communes in California & Oregon 1967-1969 ending 1969 in Hawaii in a religious cult order). There is a good story of Varanasi in the 1960s hippie times at https://anarcholoco.wordpress.com/varanasi-holy-madness/ there are still many yoga places catering to those western thrill seekers.

And monkeys everywhere. They were always chasing them off our roof garden where we would go to watch for a sunset each evening, but you know that pesky pollution kept us from the sun’s setting embrace.

Narda was fascinated by an Urban sketcher who was drawing quickly and accurately buildings in front of him. Narda is working on her own Urban sketching but she is not allowing me to post them now. Perhaps the next trip I can.

Our location is the Munchi Ghat. Which refers to the steps to the river, the Ganges. It is quite spectacular.

One of our last day things to do was the inevitable boat ride on the Ganges. We got lucky and found a ferry leaving, so we only had to fork out about $1.20 each instead of the minimum tourist charge of about $10 each. The best part was that no one tried to sell us anything on the ride. 

It was on one of our walks that we came across a boat going up the river for about a hundred rupees (all the others were two or three thousand rupees). It was more like a ferry stopping across the river on the bank that looks more like a desert with camels looking for riders to give their owners money to get over the hump (bad non-joke) and various others with hands out. I believe the river was at its low point when we were there so we got to see more land. The opposite side of all the built-up areas has no buildings. From a report 14 February 2024 “the Ganga River at Varanasi had high levels of coliform concentrations, altered pH, and elevated dissolved oxygen/biochemical oxygen demand and chemical oxygen demand values.” Not sure what all that means but from a tourist from Adelaide, ‘the Ganga River is full of shit, floating bottles, ashes of the deceased who think it is all so holy to add to pollution, a few livestock with sewage and trash going directly into the river”. However, folks love swimming and bathing in it. Go figure.

See our video of our one-hour + boat ride. https://youtu.be/NmL4YAgmQwY?si=yTb-ifsOE9vlWvJK

Varanasi for me was worth seeing one time in life. Of all the places we visited in India over the years, this must be the begging capital of India. It is impossible to go anywhere without people running up hands out. From children to adults to the alleged mystics, even the cows would poke you.

For example, we were looking for an ATM, as India rarely takes a credit card everyone wants cash. Pakistan is just the opposite with little cash and usually all credit cards. So, this person asked what we were looking for and we said an ATM so he showed us, about a single block away. He then just followed us for quite some time saying that he had helped us and we should help him. Often people want to take you to their or their family member’s or a friend’s silk store or factory or to see their silkworm pets – whatever. Or spices. Gosh, they love to show you their spices. We are content with salt and pepper and maybe some mixed herbs. All these other spices are nice to look at but I don’t want to eat them – they usually burn my mouth. One of the biggest hustles is during the morning walk along the Ganges.

Everyone seems to have a boat that will take you down the river. Or they want to put some coloured powder on my forehead so I can be enlightened. I often tell them I am an atheist and because of that I am enlightened so they can just piss off. Really, they are so determined. The other action that gets to me and I fell for it the first few times is when someone grabs my hand and I think well this dude is shaking my hand and welcoming me to his hood because he realises how enlightened I am. I did go through the initiations of ‘illumination’ and self-realization’ back when I spent a decade in a metaphysical cult order in the 1970s though I believe now that was all wishful projections by allegedly enlightened others who believed they were enlightened and now so was I. Anyway, back to now, what the end result in Varanasi when someone grabs your hand is, is that they want to give a massage at whatever price they are charging. Once I got that sorted, I would just say ‘don’t touch me’ rather forcefully and they would step back rather quickly. I also started doing that with beggars, especially the ones in saintly robes looking starved. After a while people stopped hassling us and we could go on our lovely morning walks unheeded.

One of the nice things about a homestay is that you meet some really interesting people. A nice couple from Italy with lots of covid stories and a lovely girl from the UK who was recovering slowly from the tragic death of her partner. 

We met several interesting people usually at breakfast which was a good serve. We had to join the Kautilya Society as this is one of their bases. Not sure what its actual trip is but on the internet they write, “Kautilya Society for intercultural dialogue is a non-profit organization, based in Varanasi, India. It aims at promoting dialogue and partnerships among people and cultures across the world.” No one staying here seemed to know what it was all about either. One person probably in her thirties was here for a month or two to come to terms with what happened in her life. She was in a relationship for a couple of years, had travelled with him, and thought all was OK. He was stressed at work a bit she thought as he had a lot to contend with. One day she came home, and he was hanging from a doorway. She seemed in shock, it was only five months later. She said there were no indications of issues with him. She is a graphic design artist and has a large clientele back in the UK so she can support herself as she travels. I told her about my son’s suicide shortly after turning 20 (twenty years ago) and some of the strategies that helped me such as creating a webpage about/for him, https://neuage.org/leigh.html and a  Facebook page for him https://www.facebook.com/leigh.neuage/ and a youtube page of clips of when he was a pitcher for the Lost Angeles Dodgers https://www.youtube.com/LeighNeuage. It keeps him alive for me, especially Facebook as I can see his friends twenty years later and imagine what Leigh’s life would be like. He would be retired from baseball. Only in sports can one retire young, Narda and I had to wait until we were super old (I was 70 six years ago when I retired – Narda was much younger) and I could have grandchildren. I am going to write a book on the 20 years of Leigh if he had lived. I said all these things to this girl who’s partner died and whether it helped her or not I probably will never know. We have met so many folks on this past three-month trip and have only exchanged details with two or three of them. We live in a world of instant friends never to be seen again.

We did other stuff besides walking along the Gange River view temples and giving good vibes to beggars and cows (well not really) We went to replace a pair of glasses Narda had bought a month earlier in Agra and sat on one morning in Varanasi – good grief. That was quite the journey. As always we got lost in the labyrinth of lanes and alleys that made up our space and finally finding a main road and hoping to trust Google maps again went forward into the quest of glasses replacement. We got a tuk tuk in a most frightening ride to an optometrist and happy to survive Narda was lucky, we were lucky, to find a frame that would take her new lens in her now twisted and mangled frame that she was so happy with at the start of the day. Not much of a story really except we did get back to our lanes which after a week we were getting quite comfortable with not getting as lost as we did in the beginning. Again, we are amazed how many people there are everywhere.

So that is our stay in Varanasi. I would recommend visiting once in a lifetime for five days or less. I think the nightly celebration or whatever it is to Shiva along the Ganges is worth seeing – it is in our clip above. And here are a few photos of it. The clip, Ganges’ above shows the performance

As a side note, cremations on the Ganges River is a weird tourist attraction. Either way we would walk, there would be fires going humans disappearing and ashes into the river.

Below could be true or not. Another report says ‘25,000 to 30,000 bodies are cremated on various Varanasi Ghats; about an average of 80 per day’.

8 March Monday

Going to Guwahati

Notes for the basis of the next blog:

Left Varanasi homestay at 9 pm tuk tuk to station charged 250 gave 500 – dinner at the station in the executive lounge – train half an hour late just us in four-berth then another came in we both had top berth but I took lower – other passenger left about 3 am another came in at 4 am for rest of trip
Guwahati – 18 days left -arrived 7.30 pm an hour late – tired and cranky – difficult station – finally got to street tried to get an Ola car – waited at least 45 minutes person could not find us so we cancelled  – got a taxi to Airbnb – Zoo Road – Tiniali – running out of phone charge – air b n b person let us in