147/365

On Friday we arrived in Varanasi. Our train that we had booked left from New Delhi station at 7.25, so we arrived there in plenty of time...only to find that it actually left from Old Delhi station and we had 10 minutes to get there. So we tried and failed to use the metro, then jumped in a tuk tuk for a hair-raising ride across town. We got there 15 minutes late and (although the train was probably still there) missed it. We tried to buy a ticket for a later train, and we redirected to another building, but all the trains were full. A man from a travel agent took us to his shop, where we boycotted his laptop and tried to find a ticket. Then we had an idea. General class in India is very cheap and unreserved...so we went to buy a ticket for that. Anyone we told laughed at this idea, but after trying about 3 ticket counters we had two tickets to Varanasi and ran to the platform to get on. We managed to find space on a luggage rack on this train in general and sat down surrounded by bemused Indians...only for a policeman to come and tell us we had to get off! We followed him off, and he had an argument with a train man and then told us to get the 11pm train to Mughal Sarai. So, off we went. After a few hours on the platform with men urinating copiously behind us, the train pulled in and we asked where to get on...and were told 3 tier AC (a high class). We got on and found an empty spot, only for the train to fill up before leaving. However, we were sat with two lovely Indian men called Nikhil and Nihal, who let us share their bunks that they had booked. This meant that when the ticket man came around we had to buy new tickets but at least had somewhere to stay. An uncomfortable night followed, but not as bad as 15 hours in general class would have been!

We arrived in Mughal Sarai at around 12pm and confused our guesthouse by being in the wrong train station. We finally got to the Yogi Lodge through a mess of very busy traffic and tiny winding streets, and spent the rest of the day wandering around and recovering. This man came up to us on one of the ghats and told us he would pray for us, and read our faces. Apparently from the 7th of July until 2017 I will have a golden age!

39 degrees