Hi all,
Although it's only been a few days since I last wrote, so much has happened that I thought I should write it down before I forget! We travelled to Varanasi on Friday afternoon from New Delhi train station and just the station alone provided some experiences I will never forget. There were literally 1000s of people milling around, the stench of faeces was overwhelming (it was all over the tracks) and there were stray puppies laying dying on the platform - so not a lovely sight but there were no other tourists to be seen so it certainly felt like the real deal!
The train journey to Varanasi was 14hrs and we had an upper class sleeper ticket (only 6 to a cabin, with A/C) so it was reasonably comfortable. Varanasi is in Uttar Pradesh and is where people travel to worship the river Ganges - it's one of the most sacred cities in India and is really quite beautiful. We stayed in a really nice hostel right on the ghats (steps down to the river) which made for some fantastic people watching but it was a bit of a shock to see children playing in the water where the cattle go to wash (and worse!) There were cremations taking place at ghats further down from ours so you could often see the smoke from the funeral pyres. We met some other travellers who had seen a dead child floating in the river, as they don't burn the poorest people (because they can't afford the firewood), they will sometimes just tie a weight to the corpse and take it to the centre of the river. It sounds like the weight came off in this case. It's pretty gruesome stuff but the approach to death out here is completely different, particularly where the Ganges is concerned.
Unfortunately I picked up a stomach bug while we were there which I think I got as a result of drinking chai from a back-street stall so the last 36 hours or so - including a 12hr train journey to Agra which was 4hrs late - have been a bit trying. But we're in Agra now and I briefly went to see the fort with Tim and Laura before coming back to the hotel to get some rest. I think we all felt a bit rough/frazzled/tired after Varanasi so we are treating ourselves to a 'mid-range' hotel for the night in Agra before we return to the chaos of Delhi and start our next trip. So for a princely sum of about 12 quid each we are staying in a hotel that has Western toilets, A/C, towels, satellite TV - real luxury! We're getting up at dawn tomorrow to go and see the Taj Mahal at sunrise and then we'll be heading back to Delhi to 're-group' before heading off on a fairly big trip which will take us up into the Himalayas and to some cooler parts of northern India.
Thanks for the messages on the Guestbook so far - particularly re: the apprentice result, what a shock!
Hope you're all well, keep me up to date on news from the UK etc. Kat xx
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