After a bus trip to Satna ('orrible) and grouchy overnight train* we arrived at a tour highlight.
Varanasi: where you can burn granny's corpse on a ghat by the river in the morning, then jump in for a dip and a wash afterwards.
We checked into the posh Kaiser 'Palace' Hotel (terrible wifi) for a three day stay, then tuktuk'd down into town. You could almost taste the difference.
Mainly the traffic fumes. You couldn't fit a fag paper between the people, cars, dogs, rickshaws, tuktuks, taxis and bicycles in a slow-moving not-quite gridlock, like a big box of matchsticks thrown into a small pan of toffee, then stirred, very, very slowly.
Market stalls, hawkers, knife sharpeners, shoeshiners, blanket sales ladies with dried goods, fruit, spices and veg, ice cream men, water boys, all on the street, in the street, forming the street itself.
And the buildings - contradictory, crumbling, damp, ruined affairs, with birds and monkeys perched on the colonial structures, now overlaid with the glyphs and runes of a century of Indian-style trade and commerce.
Into the bazaars - the hidden, bustling, slightly intimidating cuts and alleys leading off the main roads. They sell everything you don't want, plus kitchen utensils, which you do want, but can't fit in your rucksack.
Beggars and chancers line the way down to the river's edge, Mother Ganges.
Our guide has warned us the river is too high for the scheduled boat trip, but there is lots of other stuff to do - like visit temples - more bloody temples. He's such a tease.
Bugger that (again). Kim and I set off to experience more of the craziness of the bazaar. It is madness. We love it.
Back to the Kaiser Palace for a recharge. The tuktuk goes a different way back, past rows of hotels and government buildings and we realise we are staying in the posh end of town, a different planet, ten minutes from where we've just been.
* At least we got a nice family. Kal got a load of farting men, possibly including her husband Mark.
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