Wedding crashing, Bollywood dancing, Korean food and bhang cookie

After a 5 hour bus journey, several flights and a night in Delhi airport lounge, I finally reached Varanasi. To cut a long story short, Varanasi (one of the world’s oldest holy towns) is intense, imagine London rush hour, times it by two and then make it constant. As soon as the taxi driver dropped us off in this tightly packed old town (I traveled with two Isreali girls there), we were all blown away with the extreme hustle and bustle. It was a complete change from ‘chilled out’ South India and was the India I had always imagined in my head. We found ourselves dodging rickshaws, scooters, crowds of people (and their shooting spit), cows, goats, dogs, you name it as we attempted to share the tiny winding walkways that are beautifully lined with small temples, sari, sweet, chai and various other shops that were probably no wider than a meter and a half. Making our way to our guest house carrying a backpack the size of a cow itself and trying to avoid the traffic, touts and huge fresh heaps of cow dung was like a challenge straight from an episode of the Crystal Maze.

So in this holy place, I was able to witness many different life events all in a day. Along the River Ganges, I got to see about five weddings, countless Hindu ceremonies and a fair few funerals which also included the burning of the bodies by the ‘Burning Ghat’ (which I can only describe as an area of steps by the river bank). That was pretty strange; I saw sadness and mourning and then about 20 meters along the river, I then witnessed joy and laughter from a wedding. All this activity in one place; everything seems to happen by the river ganges, from people bathing, washing their clothes, dumping their trash, not forgetting the burning of the bodies and the cows and buffalo doing their business in there too made me decide that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go for a dip in there after all.

Anyway, it looks like my plan to be a size zero has gone to pot too because I have been pigging out big time on all the street food. I met some Koreans and of all places Varanasi offers some top notch Korean food which I ended up eating every night because it was so delicious. I also had the pleasure of spending one afternoon cackling like a hyena with a Japanese girl as we tried our first bhang cookie and thought it would be a good idea to go for a wander through the busy streets. Let’s just say it was a fun challenge when I had to find my guest house to pick up by luggage to catch my train, my friend kept saying that I would miss my train, phew...I didnt in the end!

Ohhh….I also got to gatecrash my first wedding. I rocked up in my shabby travelers outfit although if I had known that I would be attending I would have seriously bought a sari. I spent the night doing more eating (they force you to eat because they are so hospitable) and busting out with some proper Bollywood dance moves. Indian girls here can dance, there is some serious hip shaking in those dance moves and I thought I did a pretty good version of the changing-the-light-bulbs dance move too. I was wrong; I have a lot to learn.

Next stop is the dessert city of Jodhpur by a 27 hour sleeper train journey; let’s hope I can stay sane for this.