The excursion we have today is lead by a guy named mister Tripati. He is very interesting and it is told that he hasn’t got any complains for the last 11 years. We join his excursion with 8 other tourists, mostly from Italy and Spain.
We start at 05.00 am by going on the Ganges river by boat to see the Ghats (different places where people can reach the water by giant staircases) and the ceremonial cremation of death bodies. Afterwards we pay a visit to one of the biggest universities in India and a very big temple in the center of the campus, dedicated to Shiva. This is all very impressive and mr. Tripati tells us a lot about the Hindu religion, since he is a priest from the Brahman caste and knows everything about this subject. In the end of the excursion we visit an old weaving fabric in the old city where they make very beautiful scarves, dresses and decorative things of 100% silk.
We arrive at the hotel around 10.00, tired and hungry. We fuel ourselves with good food, take a shower, subscribe for the evening excursion on the Ganges and settle down at the swimming pool. This is the first time I really have a feeling of holiday, laying in the sun, next to the pool, doing nothing. I hope we can book hotels with facilities like this some more.
Dinnertime! We go to the restaurant we used to visit when we are hungry, it is part of the hotel actually. So far things have been very good here, but this time things are different. I will just sum up the things we noticed durinng our dinner, so you can decide whether or not this is normal;
A waiter drops a spoon on the floor, another one stands on it, picks it up and puts it on a sidetable, yet another one puts it back in the drawer… We see a mouse several times, the table sheet is dirty, the music goes from very loud to almost silent, the food is cold, and when we send it back to the kitchen it is burned after coming back, the waiter just trows forks and knives on the table somewhere, almost from a distance, and so on. Unbelievable we could eat here so nice the last few days. Luckily the deserts are very good and I get a discount because of my cold food, so after all good service, we will be back for breakfast tomorrow. 馃槈
17.00 pm: time for the eveningtour. Unfortunately the evening tour is not what we expected. We were told to be on the Ganges by boat for about 2 hours and could see the evening ritual and the cremation place. After all the boattrip was less than 60 minutes and we did not even see the cremation place. And the most amazing fact is that the morningtrip was 50 rupees per person cheaper and was at least 2 times longer. Unsatisfied as we feel we confront the traveldesk at the hotel with our comments. Apparenly the young guy that gave us the discription of the tour was wrong and he is very sorry. Too bad we didn’t see the cremation place. But in the end we get one thirth of the tourprice back, so we feel kind of justified.