The first thing that I always do upon arrival in whatever country I am entering is to purchase a data SIM card so that I am not reliant on the extremely limited communal Wi-Fi that is offered on board whatever vessel that I am about to board. This can usually be done swiftly and reasonably at the airport that I have landed in. India had other ideas and I had to get my guide to take me to a shop in the city where two extremely frustrating hours was spent filling in multiple forms and validation procedures. We got there in the end. Eric Newby in his very amusing 1960s travelogue “Slowly Down the Ganges” summed it up thus:

“The inhabitants of India have a simple genius for concocting exasperating situations which, however much time one may have lived in the country and however much one may have anticipated them, burst on the victim each time with pristine force”.

Boy was he right!!!!!!

Now I knew that Varanasi was high on the bucket list of your average Hindu – if there is such a thing – as they all want to come here to die and/or get cremated on the banks of Mother Ganga. What I wasn’t prepared for was a city which, with what is known as “urban sprawl”, currently has a population of 3 million people and is even by Indian standards completely out of control !!! Total mayhem of traffic and pedestrian chaos with tuktuks, sacred cows, goats, monkeys, way too many stray and malnourished dogs, and a myriad of gods critters thrown in. Mind you come to think about it, no cats. Maybe they took one look at it and went sod this and went elsewhere!?! All accompanied by throngs of Hindu pilgrims and tourists, all making their way to, and vying for position along, the sacred ghats that stretch for approximately 5 km along one bank of the River Ganges.

My hotel was an extremely welcome oasis and refuge from all of the above despite the monkey problem and the funeral pyres on the ghat below.

Due to the ban on firearms the hotel instead employs a man with a large stick to patrol the balconies and roof terrace to keep the monkeys at bay. Not very successfully I might add…..

A very early start on a freezing misty morning involved a trip in a rowing boat along the ghats at sunrise (which due to the mist it didn’t!) to see a multitude of Hindus perform their prayers and ablutions in what has to be one of the most heavily polluted sections of river in the world, And that’s before they sweep the not always fully cremated ashes into it. They do it for it’s cleansing and spiritually purifying qualities and some even drink it and/or bottle it to take home!!! Anyway I didn’t even dip my finger in it and after a walk through the narrow streets being the ghats made it back to the hotel for breakfast.

More monkeys, a huddle of stray dogs, and always my favourite, a man showing off his snake…

Next up, after breakfast we headed across the nightmare that is Varanasi to see where Buddah “found enlightenment” and where the invading Muslims decided to demolish a HUGE Buddhist monestery complex. I will post this now and cover the rest of day one in the next post.