One of the holiest places in the Hindu religion and so an important place for the majority of Indians, it was a bit of a tough time getting to Varanasi for us, with a cancelled train (and of course no announcement of cancellation) while on the platform we would have been lost if not for out fearless leaders who was able to somehow organise us to get on the train that was actually on the track all without us loosing a beat. It is moments like these that I’m glad that I joined a tour group, too think that I was going to go it alone, what would I have done in this situation, could I have been stuck at the train station overnight or until I worked out that the train wasn’t coming.

Again a well chosen hotel that offered us excellent views most of the way down the right Ganges we relaxed a bit before starting a short orientation walk so show us the sights that had to be seen. I found Varanasi an interesting town - and this might sound weird to you - but it smelled so much more different to other towns that I had been in, there was the rubbish, the cows and the sewerage all the usual stuff but there was something else different, I couldn’t pick it then and I still can’t pick it now. I do know that I haven’t seen so many cows about the place in India yet.

The 5am cruise down the river Ganges was the most significant event that we did which proved to be quite interesting. The first pass that we made was quite some distance from the river edge, but on the way back we came a lot closer, this provided a much more intimate view of the bathing, but I just wasn’t comfortable with taking photos so close to people. I am sure that if someone walked into my bathroom and starting taking photos of me while I was showing I would be pretty pissed off. On another note, did you know that they actually catch fish on the river, I assume that they eat it to, but I don’t like to think about this because of the septic state that the river is in. What with all the dead animals, rubbish and what ever is put in there.

Some bad news at the moment, we were told that all trains to Kolkata has been cancelled because of flooding in the area so nothing is going that way by land, our options could have been a different train or a plan either way it was going to cost us more money. We were all worried throughout the day until we finally found out that we indeed had to take a different route, that it would cost us more money and that we would have to leave much much later than expected. We were supposed to be out of Varanasi by about 6pm instead we left at about 11:30pm for a 12:30am train.

On the plus side, the storm hard actually moved up into the country towards us resulting in the biggest storm that I have witnessed to date. If you can imagine me standing on a roof watching lighting roll acorss the sky, it was hours and hours of fun I tell you.