Trains, Planes And....: Delhi

Our first Indian train adventure (a 15hour trip from Delhi to Varanasi) was a great success. We travelled in SL class which is the lowest class available where you are able to sleep but it is not bad if you can get an upper berth. We smuggled a bottle of Vodka, and after a few cocktails and some rounds of cards we both fell asleep with relative ease and awoke at 7am in Varanasi, right on time.

Varanai was divided into 3 parts, the "new" city which was very noisy hectic and dusty; the old city, which had narrow cobbled streets, nice bazaars and lots of cows; and the Ghats, which were along the Ganges river, where hustlers, and pilgrims were plenty and the view's were amazing. Our hotel was in the old town with a nice riverside balcony and was $8 a night. We spent the days wandering the old city and the evenings flying kites on the ghats. Every night there is a big ceremony at the main Ghat where many worshippers came to pray, there was lots of fire and bells and it was pretty intense.

The other main point of interest are the "burning ghats" where bodies are purified in the Ganges and then burned on the river's edge and the ashes are sent into the river. It is a pretty surreal place and understandably there are no pictures allowed, however Jess wanted to sneak a few seeing it was a pretty amazing site. She proceeded to sneak a picture or 2, but wasn't sneaky enough and landed us in quite a predicament. Two men accosted us and threatened calling the police unless we paid $2500, people warned us that this was a type of scam, so when we refused to pay the fine the men and Jess proceeded to have a public, profanity laced, screaming match in the middle of a half dozen burning bodies. The end result is we made a hasty exit into the maze of the old city and returned the following day camera free, lesson learned.

Our last day we took a sunrise boat ride down the Ganges which was amazing because we got to watch the locals come to bathe in the river. We returned to yoga lesson on the rooftop of our hotel which left us feeling limber and mellow for our train to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.