What a good sleep I had! For a long time we could sleep as long a we wanted today. I’m awake at 09.00 and go to the swimming pool for a fresh morningdive. Fenna and Nieneke join me a bit later. Today we have to check out before noon and our nighttrain leaves from the main trainstation at 17.20.
We take it easy today, have our last breakfast and dinner at our favourite restaurant and in between we visit the old city of Varanasi. The tuktuk’s really drive like crazy here, unbelievable there are not that many accidents on the roads. And tthe prices are also unbelievable: for like 1 euro you can be in a tuktuk for about 30 minutes with 3 persons here, very reasonable I think. And the hotel costed us 6 euro per person per night, that’s very different from what I’m used to in America. And we had the feeling we were in one of the most luxury resorts in the neighbourhood.
In the old city we walk through many alleys and finally arrive at the ganges where there are 3 bodies being burned a few meter away from us. Actually we stand between the family of the death persons, but we didn’t know. Really strange to see what they do here with death people, but also in some way very natural. Soon we go on because the enormous smoke and bad smell is not very attractive. Also we like to respect the family and let them be on their own, without irritating tourists.
At about 17.00 we arrive at the trainstation by tuktuk. Our train should leave from platform 8 (is what we found out after walking too much with our very heavy luggage). The platform is really crowded and also here there are stubborn children begging for money all the time. I keep rejecting them but they keep coming back, it is frustrating.
When we can’t find our train, we ask around a lot to non english speaking Indians. In the end there is someone who tells us that our train is almost ready to leave at platform 9. Apparently the signs on the trainstation were not right and we are lucky to be on board.
Our beds are very old and small but it is doable. Only thing is that we are in a non AC (airconditioned) section of the train (second class) in the middle of local people, while we paid for the AC-one (first class). Our agent in Kathmandu who arranged these tickets is responsible for this, so we will contact him later.
The train leaves at 18.00 and will arrive the next morning at 08.00 am. For me the night in the train was not very comfortable. Actually you have watch you luggage carefully since there are many stories about robbing things. And when I have to watch my stuff I can’t really sleep very well. Besides, my bed is not that big and with my giant backpack and other things there is not much place left to sleep.
In the evening Fenna makes friends with two young local girls, aged around 6 and 7. They speak english very well and like to speak with my sister in english very much. Their father watches proudly from aside while they are getting a small geography lesson of Nepal. I thinks these girls must have a great future with their big knowledge of english language compared to the other Indian people we met today.