Country/Town Visited: Varanasi, India
Date of stay: March 2011
Where you stayed: A guesthouse near the Ghat River (mentioned in Lonely Planet)
Tour or pre planned: Pre-planned, not with a tour group.
Varanasi, located on the holy Ghat River, is a feast of culture. You will find yourself lost in a never-ending network of narrow alleyways, where traffic space is at a premium. Bulls, cows, goats, chickens, dogs, humans, humans on motorcycles, kids and street vendors all vie for the same space which is probably no wider than two metres. In extreme cases of alleyway traffic jams, I witnessed a kid squeezing the testicles of a bull to encourage it to get a move on.
Bulls often trot down the steps of the Ghat to take a dip in the river to cool down and people do their washing and scrub themselves down while others play street cricket. Tourists naively take photos of the public body cremation ceremonies on the river only for locals and police to pounce and demand money as it is not only illegally but spiritually insulting not snap pictures of the dead.
On the way to the hostel from Varanasi Train Station I met up with another Kiwi guy. We got a bicycle-taxi ride together to our hostel for about 30 rupees (40 pence, at the time of travel the exchange rate was 70 rupees to the Pound). It was a relaxing way to make your way to the main part of Varanasi even though it is pretty hard work for the guy cycling. What with two large backpacks and 2 blokes to tug along. It’s not relaxing however when a bus is rammed right up behind you and insistent on following at a distance of no more than 3 centimetres for the duration, accelerating and braking suddenly. The only protection as a back seat cyclist is a flimsy cover from the rain.
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