We took an early morning stroll along the ghats before returning to our favorite breakfast place here… then returned to the hotel. My stomach illness is done, Annie’s cough has been gone for a while, but now she has the stomach bug… so she slept away the afternoon as I tried to register us for the International Yoga Festival running in India during the first week of March. It’s frustrating when the site doesn’t include prices and needed details, asks questions there’s no way we can answer, and states boldly that if anything is missing the application won’t be accepted. Add to the frustration the slow internet speed and the power being out in the hotel (the WiFi runs on a generator) so my laptop was almost out of power. I never got it done.
When she woke about 4:30 we thought we’d go down the street to book a train to Delhi for later in the week then get something simple to eat (like soup and noodles or rice). We didn’t know it was raining. The dirty roads were now muddy roads with puddles and cow shit everywhere (there’s a reason these locals wear plastic flip-flops). We made our way to a little hole-in-the-wall travel “office” where a pleasant gentleman sat us down next to his computer and struggled with his server to find us train tickets while he connected to the internet. After a number of tries it looked like trains wouldn’t be our option. The plane would just be over an hour and about $100/each (the train is an overnight 12 hrs and not much less). As he was searching for us he was giving us his philosophy of life and why Varanasi is the best place anyone could live… saying some Westerners come here and complain about the filth everywhere. “The lotus flower grows in the mud! You have to go through shit to be cleansed!” he explained as Annie noticed a rat running across his floor.
Believe it or not, this city is growing on us. it’s not Disneyland but it’s authentic. When we first arrived we were planning on staying maybe a week. The first morning we experienced the shock of this culture and though maybe 1-2 days maximum… maybe less. Now we’re thinking maybe another week? As I said, it’s growing on us.
I’m getting a kick doing balloons with the street kids. They’re hungry and begging, but they are playful.