We arrived in Varanasi exhausted as we didn’t sleep well in our ‘sleeper class’ beds on the train. There were 15 people sharing the 9 beds in our area- including cryingbabies on and under the beds! This was when we eventually got into our berths after spending 20 minutes moving all the people out!
The train station was full of touts and presumably thieves (we say this due to the fact that we were tracked by a number of shady people from the train to the tourist office). On arrival we promptly booked our tickets out of there for three nights later, opting for a nicer AC cabin this time.
Varanasi looks much the same as every other Indian city until you enter the old city- only possible by rickshaw- drab. That isn’t to say the old city isn’t dirty, it’s right up there with Agra, but has a certain charm, being one of the oldest cities in the world. The narrow alleys reminded us of Venice, a Venice where cows and motorcycles compete with you over the three foot of passable space while spraying you with some holy shit.
For Varanasi is a holy spiritual place for allHindu’s. This centeres around the river Ganges, and it’s bathing ghats. From these ghats, or stairs to the river, Hindu pilgrims wash away their sins, preferably at dawn. There are lots of ghats in Varanasi and some are used to cremate the dead in a spiritual ceremony, where we were told up to four thousand bodies are burned a day. This reminded us of a conversation we had earlier in Khajuraho with a restaurateur who matter of factly told us that everyone there gets Malaria, it’s no problem, if you get it you go to the doctor. He helps you or you may die. But so many people die everyday in India that ‘we mourn for an hour and then move on’. He was also referring to the recent bombs in Dehli and elsewhere around the country.
Security was high around the old town- hopefully ensuring that all the deaths were natural- because of tension between the Muslims and the Hindu’s. There are two temples within the GoldenTemple complex one from each religion, thus around each entrance there are upwards of four armed guards. As it was an Indian Hindu festival that weekend the area was thronged.
We stayed in a mediocre hotel in Meer Ghat, with a wonderful view of the river. From the hotel we were able to walk straight down to the ghats and commission a boat the following dawn to ride along the river for an hour to watch the spiritual washing ritual. It was worth the early rise. The pilgrims were fully involved in their bathing, ignoring or oblivious to the passing boats full of busily snapping awe struck tourists. While watching an old man whip of his undies to use as a face cloth is interesting, the burning ghats were definitely more of a focal point. The previous day, while we were walking along the ghats, we passed a ‘funeral’. The body was carried through the town and down the steps to the river by some outcasts- the lowest castes in India- where they proceeded to dip it into the river for one last spiritual bath. There were already two fires fully ablaze feeding of previous bodies, we didn’t want to stick around and see this one enter the flames. We walked away, had some lunch and eventually worked our way back and the funerals were still in full swing, this time the body was uncovered, with the wife and children lamenting around it, but we quickly passed through, now that we had seem the dead mans face we definitely didn’t want to see him burn. Around this ghat there were huge piles of logs for the fires, the higher the wood quality the more expensive the cremation. Each pile is carefully weighed out for the size of the particular body and the cost is calculated accordingly. The touts were cashing in here offering to give tourists a better view, a family history and asking for a hefty fee to help pay for the funeral- which you know will never get to the families.
On our final day in Varanasi we took a two hour yoga lesson with the five foot flute playing Yogi Rajkumar Vajpai or Raju to his friends- which we were after five seconds. It was a wonderful session, he was a great teacher, very encouraging ‘‘Look me, ah, yes, yes, you’ve got it, I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’’ he said, as we flexed our toes. When we completed a pose somewhat correctly, he flipped into a handstand and ran around the room in delight. The session wound down with some deeply relaxing mediation and right back up again with some quick hissing star jumps to increase lung capacity- or perhaps punishment for the snore that was let slip during meditation. On our leaving he enthusiastically thanked us for thanking him for the session. And, as he is Indian after all, enquired would we be back the next day as we handed our money over. We would indeed have been back the next day and many more if we didn’t have to leave Varanasi that night. We thoroughly enjoyed the session and will seek out another as soon as we can.
From Varanasi we caught our night train to Gorakpur, where we met two Israeli guys- kfir and Amir, a Spanish and French couple- Raffa and Eliza and a Korean- Ha dong kyong. With our unlikely band we eventually hired a jeep-thanks to Kfir’s hard bargaining- to take us to the border town of Sunauli, where we walked across the border into Nepal.
As Malachy just pointed out this title sounds like an Indiana Jones film, and that is indeed the era the town capitulates you into.
But let’s update you to our arrival. Firstly we began our journey by breakfasting on our hotel rooftop restaurant. The food was crap but this was far out weighed by the priceless view of the sunrise slowly illuminating the Taj Mahal. After a death defying auto rickshaw ride across town we had a lovely train from Agra to Jhansi. Our train was delayed; therefore we missed our express bus connection to Khajuraho, which meant we had the pleasure of spending a few hours in Jhansi.
To describe Jhansi, let me first tell you about Ireland’s annual ‘Tidy Town’ competition. For this competition committees are often established in each entered town to ensure that they have a serious chance of winning this prestigious prize. Now Jhansi bus station, hum, if you could imagine the exact opposite to the Tidy Towns competition, say a ‘most horrendously disgusting putrid hole’ competition, we’re pretty certain that Jhansi, could win hands down. The people definitely contribute with a vigour any Tidy Town Committee member would envy. An example of how you too could be a winner in this town would be to drop your pants and squat down just about anywhere, but preferably near a food stall or open bus door/window and relieve yourself. I chose the unorthodox method of using the public toilets- for a fee I might add- and came out with no less then five mosquito bites on my rear end- a rupee for every bite!
We met Johanna and Anders in Jhansi (from sterile Sweden) who told us of their first few days in India. They apparently kept themselves occupied with projectile vomiting and dihorrea (thanks Korea for helping us build up our immune systems over the last three years, so far so good)! Our bus to Khajuraho was over crowded. By more than double. More than triple. A lot more. We had seats- this was very, very good. We arrived five and a half hours later to a warm welcome from the touts. We actually booked into a nice hotel, the room was huge, clean and the cheapest so far in India. Already Khajuraho was looking good to us.
As I mentioned earlier, exploring Khajuraho brings you back to another era. The streets are huge colonial events with lots of nice looking restaurants and cafés. The town and its people is the quietest we’ve come across thus far and seems to run solely on tourism, but unlike Agra, the money appears to have filtered down to even the outcasts. While there are still cows roaming free on the streets, leaving their messes everywhere and touts swarming around worse than the mosquitoes, the town still looks like a town, rather then a swampy leprosy jail. There are three sets of the famous erotic temples, only one of which you have to pay an entrance fee for (20r Indians, 300r foreigners). These are definitely worth a visit, we highly recommend them. This group of Western temples are situated on amazingly well kept, beautifully hand-cut grass. Once entering onto the grounds an amazing sense of tranquillity abounds. The vast space and cleanliness seems paradoxical to the India beyond the entrance gates. I had this same sensation on entering the Taj Mahal, but the great concentration of tourists didn’t make the point so obvious at the time. We strolled leisurely around the temples and grounds for hours. The craftsmanship of the stonework decorating the temples is superb. Many facets of life- real or imaginary- are depicted from thousands of years before, the most entertaining being the erotic pieces. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves here! We stayed in Khajuraho a total of three days, spending many an hour enjoying the culinary delights of Raja’s Café, a Swiss owned restaurant that had the most amazing Indian food we’ve ever tasted, actually the foreign food was pretty good also, all as cheap as chips! After a lot of misguided/falsified information we finally got a bus from Khajuraho to Satna, rather than the direct route to Varanasi (huge thanks Anna and Robin for the tip on not taking the hell bus for 12-15 hours straight). From Satna it was an overnight train (delayed by four hours due to unrest in the Bihar region) which delivered us to Varanasi-a city we were somewhat apprehensive about visiting due to many a travellers tale, especially our two Swedish friends who told us pale faced over dinner that they would be giving the place a wide berth!
Agra is a city of over 1 million people with one main reason that anybody visits…The Taj Mahal (entrance fee Indians/foreigners20r/750r)and to a lesser extent the Agra fort (entrance fee 20r/300r).
It’s biggest natural resource seems to be its ability to produce touts.From the young to the very old- everyone is a tout in Agra. They will try to bleed you dry of every cent thatyou have but when you see the conditions they live in on a day to day basis you can’t blame them. We are the gravy train that only stays one day…never to return again. We had a child follow us for over 2 km trying to sell us some coasters while we were on a walk!! No transaction is cut and dry here, even going to the shop to get some water. That conversation would probably go something like this:
“Good afternoon sir. How are you today?”
“Very good now boss. Can I have a 2 litre bottle of water please?”
“Of course sir. How many?”
“Just the one boss”
“Would you like some crisps or chocolate sir?”
“Just the water please”
“Would you like a guide? My brother has a tuk-tuk and can show you the best places to see the Taj.”
“Just the water please”
“Why don’t you want to give my brother a chance sir? Just meet him for 1 minute.”
“Just the water please”
“Ok sir. I understand. Here’s your change”
“It’s fifty short”
“No, its not. Look you gave me 100. It’s 10,20,30. Oh, I am so sorry sir. Here you are.”
“You’re some boyo.”
Besides the touts and the aesthetically dreadful town, the Taj Mahal is……absolutely amazing!!! It is by far the most amazing and beautiful building I have ever seen. It is picture perfect. Nothing I have seen can come close to it. The fact that it was built out of love for the Maharaja’s dead wife made it even more special for us because we are on our honeymoon.
While many foreigners think the entrance fee of 750r is extortionate in comparison to the mere 20r an Indian national pays, we did find one particular local shopkeeper who sided with us. While we sat and enjoyed our purchases, he chatted away about the cricket, India’s chances of winning, warned us against the dangerous touts and guides and advised us to trust nobody. He then complained about the 750 Taj entrance fee for foreigners, telling us how he even wrote a letter to the government in our favour, we were thoroughly won over by him, at last a nice honest Indian man not out to screw us! As we were paying, he asked us did we want anything else, postcards, trinkets, chocolate, water? Although we didn’t exactly need any water we decided to buy a litre from him, where he then proceeded to overcharge us by 50%! Ah, this is indeed India!
We stayed in Agra for 3 nights at the SaniyaPalace which had a lovely view of the Taj and we did little but visit the Taj, explore the town, get our laundry done and generally relax. It was too long in Agra and I would recommend just a day trip from Dehli but we wanted to get the morning train that would be met by an express bus to our next destination, Khajuraho…The Karma Sutra temples
Oh god! Where do we start??? I guess we’ll start at the beginning at the airport.
After getting through immigration, we headed to the baggage carousel and found Stephanie’s bag without a problem but were waiting 20 minutes for mine when we were told that some of the bags had been dumped at the end of the carousel. It was a free for all with a lot of pushing and shoving and eventually I got my bag. Welcome to India!! We then got a pre-paid taxi to the city and we were staying in the “Pahar Ganj” area of the city. It’s where all the backpackers stay and therefore where all the cheap accommodation is. Things were going fine in the taxi until we turned onto what we now know to be the Main bazaar where we were staying in Pahar Ganj. The place looked literally like a bomb had just gone off and the taxi driver seemed to be playing chicken with every other driver on the dirt track that was allegedly a road. My first thoughts were “Oh no, he’s made a mistake…we’re not staying here??!!”. When he stopped the taxi and pointed down a tiny alley to our “hotel”, I realised what the next few months would be like. Getting out of the taxi, we were greeted with the smell of urine, begging women with child attached and touts trying to direct us to another hotel- not for the faint hearted. They should send trucks of domestos with instruction pamphlets. Filthy. The whole place. Just filthy. Even Mr. Muscle would walk away from this place.
The hotel (Hotel Namaskar) was crummy but we were so exhausted that we took it. After laying out our sleeping bags on the beds (there was no way we would sleep on the sheets), we forgot about everything outside and got some sleep, glorious sleep. It’ll be all better when I get up I thought, we’re just over tired. It’s not that bad.
We woke at 5pm and went for a walk and it actually wasn’t as bad as it was in the morning. What was and still is most disturbing is the poverty. I have seen poverty in Malawi and Zambia. I have seen it first hand since I was a child but not on this scale, not on this magnitude. Children lying in urine, men collapsed at the side of the road unable to get up with flies all over their face looking like they are at deaths door without the energy to beg. There is no Mother Theresa in Dehli. It looks like there is no-one to help the poor here. It’s devastating.
Dehli itself is crazy. The traffic is chaotic and I think Ruidhrai summed it up best when he said “its like wacky cars on acid!” Hiring a car in Dehli is not an option that anyone should consider. There are cars, trucks, full buses with people hanging out of them, tuk-tuks (small motorcycle come passenger vehicle), bicycle rickshaws, bicycles, people, cows, dogs, horses, camels and lunatics all trying to move down small roads at the same time with no order and so of course it turns into chaos. Mental.
We went to the big Mosque in Dehli by rickshaw and it was a white knuckle ride! After getting some…make that loads of stares from the people around the mosque, Stephanie bought a shawl to cover her shoulders and elbows as they were driving the locals wild with excitement. Ironically, we bought the shawl from a store that also sold fashionable burqa’s. A woman was actually trying one on when we went there and she was looking at herself in the mirror which I thought was funny as they’re all black and cover everywhere bar the eyes!
We also went to the Red fort and saw the sound and light show which was a very interesting and entertaining one hour history lesson. We stayed in Dehli for 2 days adjusting to the sights, sounds and incredibly different environment before getting a morning train to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.
In Pisa, naturally we’d no accommodation booked, but a walk around eventually brought us to da Leo’s a nice, but basic B&B for 65euro a night. Pisa proved to be romantic, friendly, beautiful, warm and all things good. A nice place to break in the reality that, oh my God,we just got married! With the busy fortnight in Spain, this was our first time to really realise we are now husband and wife. Malachy proceeded to tell everyone we met, in his best Borat accent ‘she is my wife’.
My first glance of the infamous leaning tower was one of disappointment, we viewed it from a back street, and to me it was less then impressive. From learning about it during my school days, to making a paper model of it with some of my students in Korea, I expected something bigger. It seemed as if it was leaning out from the surrounding buildings just to be seen. Tall buildings seem so mundane to us now, that my first utterance was ‘is that it?’ Although, on walking around into the park, seeing the tower stand/lean out, rather then blend it, I have to admit, I am impressed. It’s spectacular, where Korea definitely outdoes it in height, it has the upper hand where beauty and architecture is concerned. Magnificent!
Food was wonderful, some of the best pizza we’ve ever tasted (as good as the ‘one hour pizza’, but a fraction of the time and cost!- fellow Yeojuites know what I’m talking about!). Wine, wine wine..
An early rise, proceeded by a brisk walk to the airport -15mins- led us once again to our ‘on time Ryanair flight’ (sorry guys, we have to admit that we are impressed with Ryanair) to London Stansted.
London
We had to make our way cross-country to Heathrow, on the National Express, which cost more then our flights from Pisa!! Ridiculous! Heathrow seemed like another cross-country race trying to get to terminal four, luckily we had hours to spare. After a break-the-bank day at Heathrow, a few emotional calls home, we finally boarded our flight to Delhi at 5.20pm. Hello screaming babies! Not one, not two, but three babies were around us, with a few more in the cabin ahead; let’s just say they didn’t like flying!
We left the wonderful Cortijo La Forteleza on Saturday 11th October, under a shower of confetti where my aunt may have improvised a new custom of stuffing it into our underwear- apparently for that extra sparkle on our first night alone- but perhaps she was just trying to check out the new man in the family?
After such a wonderful afternoon send off, it was disappointing to learn on arrival in Malaga that the confetti wouldn’t be released just yet, as we had an overnight bus journey ahead of us to Alicante, departing 12.30, arriving 07.30. Naturally the best way to tackle the rest of the day was with a few ‘tinto de verano’s con limon’, a summer wine we developed a taste for during our time in Seville a few years back. Exhausted and sedated we settled into our ‘bed’- thanks Paul and Misun, the pillows are invaluable- and hardly woke until arrival in Alicante. (Which they didn’t announce and only briefly stopped, thus luckly we didn’t end up in Barcelona!). May all our bus journeys ahead be like that one- I guess one of those side pockets on the rucksack can carry the wine! A hop skip across the road led us to the bus that led us to the airport, that led us to our ‘on time’ Ryanair flight to Pisa.
Greeting from the new Mr. and Mrs. Stephanie Ronan, welcome to our honeymoon!
We want to take a minute to thank everyone for a most wonderful time in Spain. You truly contributed in making our wedding day the most special of our lives. Thank you all for coming, and for those of you who couldn’t, thanks for all the warm wishes of love and support and might I add the very generous gifts!
From the hotel we were able to walk straight down to the ghats and commission a boat the following dawn to ride along the river for an hour to watch the spiritual washing ritual. It was worth the early rise. The pilgrims were fully involved in their bathing, ignoring or oblivious to the passing boats full of busily snapping awe struck tourists. 
While watching an old man whip of his undies to use as a face cloth is interesting, the burning ghats were definitely more of a focal point. The previous day, while we were walking along the ghats, we passed a ‘funeral’. The body was carried through the town and down the steps to the river by some outcasts- the lowest castes in 
