Unfortunately, I managed to delete the completed blog I had written for the second half of Varanasi so this is my second attempt at writing. We had been in Varanasi for a few days by this point, and we were starting to get familiar with the rhythms of life. In this blog, I’ll cover our last 4 days in Varanasi before we move on to Kolkata in West Bengal.

Saturday –

We were up early from the homestay on Saturday morning as we had arranged with Brown Bread Bakery to do a sunrise boat tour. There is a bit of a fascination in India of doing activities, and especially boat tours, at sunrise or sunset. This is all well and good, but does tend to involve a pre-6am get up. In this case, we were to meet our guide, Chandu, at Brown Bread Bakery at 5.30am, and so we asked Harish to book us a rickshaw to get there.

We arrived at the ghat and met Chandu, who supplied us with coffee and pastries to take with us on the boat. We boarded the row boat and spent the next hour or so slowly drifting down with the flow of the water past the ghats in the early morning light. Chandu, a very sweet man who had lived and worked in cafes in Varanasi for decades and who sported quite incredible tufts of hair from his earlobes, interspersed the rowing with facts about the passing buildings and history of the city. Life was already in full flow by 6am as we passed by, with people bathing, worshiping and milling around on the steps down to the Ganges. Chandu rowed the boat over to the other side of the river which, given it was summer season, was a sand-bank stretching back at least a kilometer in front of the land’s edge. Here, there was a gentler slope down to the water, and so many people took an early morning boat across to bathe without the risk of losing their footing on the slippery steps of the ghats.

After an hour or so, Chandu moored the boat, and we set out on foot south along the ghats. We passed countless temples, shrines, priests for hire, rituals, ceremonies, and funeral pyres before ending in Assi ghat, the southernmost ghat. Here, we watched the end of an open air yoga class being taught from the stage to locals who come at 5am every morning to practice. The class was just finishing as we arrived, and we watched for a few minutes before rickshawing back to Bread Bread Bakery with Chandu.

We paused at the bakery briefly to have a cold drink as the day was already heating up, then found a rickshaw to take us home. We decided that it might be a good day to visit Sarnath, which is 30 minutes or so to the north of Varanasi, but really part of the same conurbation. Sarnath was the historical site where Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, have his first sermon after becoming enlightened under the Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya to the south-east of Varanasi. As such, it is a major site on the buddhist pilgrimage trails that follow the Buddha’s wandering through southern Nepal and northern India.

We booked an Uber to take us the longer drive up to Sarnath, and were dropped off by a small coffee shop to get a bite to eat. The cafe was deserted and cool, and made the perfect stop for a coffee and a sandwich before braving the heat of the day. We went first to the Thai buddhist temple, which boasted a huge standing statue of the Buddha in amongst gloriously green and lush gardens. From there, we walked to the Deer Park, which was supposed to be the site of the Buddha’s sermon.

The Deer Park was the site of archeological remains of a variety of ancient buddhist temples from the 7th and 8th centuries CE, and boasted a huge brick stupa (conical structure) over at one side. The park was green and peaceful given it was set back from the road, but as it had very little shade we had to beat a retreat to the air-conditioned archaeological museum after half an hour or so. The archaeological museum housed a number of stone sculptures and idols from both Buddhist and Hindu mythology, which was interesting in a gentle kind of way. There is only so many weathered stone sculptures one can look at, however, so after cooling down we booked an Uber to take us back home.

Once back at the homestay, we sat out the heat of the day under the air-conditioning, and got ourselves ready to go back out in the evening. There was a music and dance performance taking place at the International Music Centre Ashram, and so we headed in a rickshaw back into the ghats backstreet area to find it. The Music Centre Ashram was a small room with a stage, a few rows of chairs, and a floor seating area up front and to the side. Most of the seats were already taken by what seemed to be a large spiritual community of Spanish people, so we found a seat on the ground to the side and waited for the performance to begin.

The first half of the programme was a raga performed on an traditional flute with drum accompaniment. Both musicians were clearly very talented, and it was not unlike some of the music we had seen in Kochi. After the intermission, where free tea was handed around, a Kathak (an classical Indian dance) dancer took to the stage. She was accompanied by the same drummer, as well as the harmonium. Kathak uses footwork, spins, facial expressions and noises to tell stories, usually from Indian holy books like the Ramayana. This made for an entertaining hour or so, especially since the dancer often reprimanded the musicians for not keeping the rhythm or changing the tempo.

It was gone 9.30pm by the time the performance had finished, and we had a curfew of 11pm when the gates of the homestay were locked and Harish & family were in bed. We were yet to have dinner, and so we popped into a small restaurant, called “Nice Restaurant” in the backstreets. We were the only customers and, though simple, the food was delicious. That said, given the time the owner/chef/waiter had to fire up everything again and make the food from scratch, so it was getting dangerously close to 11pm by the time we paid and left.

We walked out to the main road and flagged a rickshaw, who inevitably had never heard of any of the districts or roads near our homestay, even though it was only 10 minutes drive away. We made our bone-shaking way (rickshaws in Varanasi seem to have a lack of suspension uniquely unsuitable for the city’s terrible roads) via my Google Maps directions towards the homestay and, after refusing the rickshaw driver’s attempt to get us to pay more than agreed for no reason, made it in at 11.01pm just as the gates where being locked.

Sunday –

We were up on Sunday at a much more reasonable time, and had our usual homestay breakfast of papaya with curd, toast with jam, and aloo paratha. We had nothing much else on for the morning, so made our way back to the ghats via yet another rickshaw to sit in Brown Bread Bakery to drink coffee and write some of the previous blog. Before we knew it, it was lunch time and so we ate at the bakery, before finding a rickshaw to take us the longer journey to Hotel Surya, where we had swum a few days earlier.

We had booked a couples massage at Surya for the afternoon, and had planned to have a dip in the pool for an hour or so beforehand. The pool, however, was closed for a wedding function so we instead sat in the air-conditioned lobby with a fresh lime soda and continued reading and blog writing.

Soon enough it was time for the massage, and we were shown to our twin massage room in the spa. The next 90 minutes were spent in the blissfully quiet, fragrant smelling semi-dark whilst our masseuses worked out knots formed from several long train journeys and millions of shrill motobike horns. It was over far too quickly, but we left feeling rejuvenated.

We had left ourselves, for the second time in 24 hours, barely enough time to get back to the homestay before we were supposed to be picked up for a evening boat trip organised by Harish. We raced back in a rickshaw, disembarked at the homestay, and stepped straight into another waiting rickshaw that took us down to the southern ghats. Here, a man with rickets was waiting for us and led us down to the quay and put us on a row-boat. He told us that our boatman spoke no English, which was fine by us.

We were rowed slowly down-river from the southern ghats to the northern ghats, passing the usual but still fascinating sights of life on the ghats. We circled close by Marikarnika ghat, the burning ghat, and alighted at the main ghat, Dashashwamedh ghat, where the fire ceremony was about to start. Given we had seen the fire ceremony at Assi ghat a couple of night before, we decided to make our way instead to an upmarket hotel for dinner.

The hotel was situated on the banks of the river, and I spent several minutes on the phone to the maitre d’ trying to persuade him we could afford the 1500/- (£15) minimum spend before they let us in. The restaurant was deserted at first, but began to fill up as the evening progressed. We have noticed a bit of a trend in India (with a few notable exceptions) of the more expensive restaurants relying on opulent interiors or stunning views to draw in the customers, and lacking a bit on the food side. This restaurant was no exception and, though the food was good, it was no match for the simple but delicious food of Nice Restaurant the evening before. Once we had eaten, we made the usual rickshaw journey back to the homestay, and to bed.

Monday –

You may be surprised to read that we had booked another class with our pistashio hand-feeding yoga instructor. Despite his eccentricities, it had been nice to attend an Indian yoga class that challenged both of us whilst still making us laugh, so we rushed out again on Monday morning for a Brown Bread Bakery pastry en route to his ‘studio’. Cinnamon rolls and chocolate croissants in hand, we headed in to another hilarious class, ranging from random singing and assurances that he could see our pure souls, to some thigh-slapping (our thighs, by him) and relationship-instructions which always felt well-meaning but would raise more than a few eyebrows in a UK yoga class. He finished up by explaining how we would most likely see his face when finally achieved Samadhi (a state of meditative consciousness) and we giggled our way back along the Ghat to the aforementioned bakery we essentially lived in in Varanasi.

By now we knew all of the lovely staff working there and we debriefed each other over a veritable brunch feast of soups, sandwiches, juices, lemonade and a french press each. We made a plan for the day which involved checking out the very famous Shiva temple, and headed to the tourist office ready to brave the rumoured crowds. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) we had both forgotten our passports in the rush to yoga which are essential for foreigners to enter, so we instead whiled away an hour or so in the scrupulously clean temple plaza around it, people-watching with an ice-cold sprite.

Eventually it was time for me to head off for a private dance class I had booked with the classical dance performer we had watched a couple of nights earlier. I’d booked the class prior to seeing the show featuring her rather stern and public chastising of her accompanying musicians. As we all know I do not love a chastise, so I steeled myself as I took off my birks (ed. sandals) at the deserted stage from the performance. I’d signed up to learn some of classical dance form she had been performing, Kathak, which I have never tried before but looked intriguing especially after witnessing her 53 spins. She showed up 15 minutes late looking characteristically surly and got straight on with teaching me the opening sequence – in which you perform a series of arm movements with spins and squats to bow to the audience/dance floor, whilst also making classical-dance specific sounds. For some reason she seemed to think I possessed some natural Kathak flair and cheered up immediately, leading to a reasonably intense hour of rhythmic foot tapping, but I honestly love to dance so much I didn’t mind the intensity at all and the hour felt like 10 minutes. I may or may not have already emailed a kathak teacher back in Reading.

Rob met me post class and we went back down to the river banks. Bathing in the Ganges, as we have spoken about before, has huge spiritual importance for Hindus and Rob had been keen to do it here – if not quite the twice a day we had been instructed to by the sweet young men on the Shekhawati-Jaipur train. I had been more hesitant given the levels of dirt/health concerns cited online (don’t google it mum) plus the idea that certain bodies are deemed to pure to burn and are ?put in the Ganges as is and might float past. However, having been in the city several days, seen the relative cleanliness of the water and the reams and reams of Indians taking their ritual dips in I was on board too. We picked a relatively quiet and chilled stretch with some young men messing around in the water (people play catch in it like a European beach completely intertwined with others in silent prayer) and some women bathing too. Rob took a full-on swim whilst I slightly more cautiously dunked down fully-dressed as is the done thing for women. We both agreed it was pretty magical to dip in such a revered body of water, and it did the job of cooling us down a bit too.

We changed in the ‘floating changing rooms’ dotted around the banks and headed for a mid-afternoon lassi from the famed lassi shop – complete with shaved flakes of sugared apple and a cupful of pomegranate seeds – before heading home. We hopped in to a rickshaw on a very busy main road, and began to feel a little suspicious as the usual fraught and difficult negotiations around price and them understanding where the homestay is were peppered with more than normal interruptions from other drivers. We hoped they were just particularly keen to steal our custom and headed off. The driver almost immediately picked up another 3 people and headed to their request in the opposite direction from ours. Eventually, after he had dropped them off and shouted back some things that sounded suspiciously like asking for more money, we got him to take us near home. As soon as we got out he demanded way more money than we’d promised, kept putting his hands on his keys and making to get out and demand it more forcefully. He was about half Rob’s weight but on closer inspection did look a little drunk and unhinged, however after a few minutes of faux-squaring up to Rob (won’t lie I took a back seat in this) and a very half-hearted intervention from a passing security guard, we slipped away down our side street without being further ripped off or coming to any harm.

After a rest and a shower we were ready to face the Varanasi rickshaws again to get out for dinner. We headed for a deserted but nice restaurant called ‘Moonshiners’ presumably due to the fact it sold alcohol, and enjoyed very pleasant dal, beers and G&Ts. We remained the only customers bar a couple of men who seemingly just came to shot several whiskies, but it was a nice quiet place with again better curries than our previous fancy meal. We headed home with no issues this time and to rest up for our last day in the city.

Tuesday –

Tuesday was our last day in Varanasi, and we started with our usual homestay breakfast of papaya with curd and toast with jam, though the paratha was sadly missing in favour of a less delicious breakfast rice dish. We were starting to get a little tired of the usual rickshaw-wrangling into the ghats area, but we decided to give the Shiva temple another go. Fortunately, Harish had booked a rickshaw for us which removed a large part of the difficulty, and we headed into town.

We arrived at the ticket office at about 10.45am, and were told that the temple was closed from 11.30am to 2pm, and so had missed the last entry for the morning. We took this as a sign from God, and gave it up as a bad job. Instead, we took another rickshaw from the city centre out to the Surya hotel in the suburbs to fit in a last swim before we left. The rickshaw inevitably tried to charge more money once we’d arrived, but his heart wasn’t in it and we just gave him the agreed price and walked away.

We spent a pleasant couple of hours at the poolside with some cold drinks, and enjoyed the glorious cool of the pool in the scorching heat of the day. The pool was largely deserted again whilst we were there, save from a couple of kids quietly playing down one end, evidently because no-one else was foolish enough to sit around outside even if it was in the shade of a parasol. However, we didn’t quite get heat stroke, and even ordered a couple of pizzas to our sun loungers for lunch. They were passably good, though are the likely culprit for Ellie’s nascent stomach bug that evening.

The rest of the afternoon passed without much incident. We made our way home to pack, and once back we didn’t have the energy or desire to go back out into the chaos of the city. Instead, we ordered some Chinese into the homestay for dinner (which sadly was really quite bad) and, by the evening, Ellie was starting to feel quite unwell with stomach cramps. This was especially sub-optimal given we had to be up at 4am for a train to Calcutta (obviously that’s not how I phrased it to Ellie), as so it was with a sense of uncertainty that we went to bed with our alarms set, waiting to see the state of play when they went off in a few hours time.

And so, that was Varanasi! We have never seen anything quite like that city, but by the end of 7 days we were ready for some (relative) peace and quiet. Sorry to leave it on something of a cliff hanger but we have actually got the next blog ready to publish too so what happens on Wednesday morning is only a click away!

Until then,

Rob & Ellie xxx