At this point we are sitting in Agra train station expecting our train to roll in at 11:15 and depart shortly thereafter. We went and got some food at the only eatery in the station, a Daahl and Bread stand where they served a Lentil porridge thing and fried pita bread for you to dip into it. It was okay but clearly not sanitary and hardly counted as a meal. There were honestly rats running around between our feet and wild boars, cows, and even a monkey visible from the restaurant so I can only imagine what health risk we were in, but it was literally the only eating option. No one ended up getting sick from it fortunately, the only bad part was when the waiter dumped about half a bowl of the stuff all over Jill’s backpack. So we finished there, paid our 3 dollar total for the five of us and got kicked out for lingering.
We then wait the hour and a half until the train’s time comes, and get our stuff packed up. I walked to the front gate where there was a giant board that told us whether the trains were on time or not, and to my disgust this board now had our train arriving at 12:30 am. An hour late, I guess that wasn’t too bad, so we waited it out. That hour came and went only to have our train delayed another hour. Now for those keeping score at home, this makes no sense. If an hour passed and they delayed the train by an hour, that means that it moved nowhere in that time. Anyways, we were now pretty tired and frustrated, feeling our time in Varanasi slipping away before we were even on our way. To make a long story less long, the train ended up showing up just before 3:00 am, almost 4 hours late. We had a hard time finding the right car and basically had to sprint the length of the train to get to it because even though the thing was 4 hours late, it only stopped at our station for about 35 seconds it seemed. Regardless, we found our car and went in search of our assigned beds. The beds were bunked, in rooms of either two or four beds with a curtain separating us from the walkway. Tolan and Sarah had a two bed nook, Jill and myself were in a four bed one with two Indian men, and Carson was by herself with three Indians. We all fell asleep pretty instantly and actually had a pleasant experience. I slept until 9:00 am and then after using the lavatory got another three hours. Considering that we were sleeping on a filthy Indian train, I will happily take my 9 hours of sleep. After everyone woke up and changed clothes we wandered around the train for a bit as we approached our stop. It was actually a lot of fun to open the door of the moving train and sit there on the floor with our feet hanging out. The countryside was quite impoverished but at the same time beautiful and charming. In many ways it reminded me of Kansas in terms of landscape. The train stopped a few times and we had fun taking pictures during those times. For example Tolan hopped out onto the tracks and took pictures of me hanging out of the door looking ahead and truly dramatic fashion. He then wanted the same picture but the train started to move, so I jumped out, and actually had to run ahead of the train to turn back and get a picture of him as it was moving by. The first one failed, so I ran one more time, saw the train speed up and panicked but my picture turned out perfect. I jumped onto the slowly moving train like a pro and enjoyed the final stretch to our stop.
We arrived at the stop and were greeted by our driver Babalu who had a sign that said “Mr. Thomas Dresser” since we put the stuff in my name and they used my passport to do it all. It was pretty funny and we all enjoyed a laugh. We found out our poor driver had been there since 8 am, our originally scheduled arrival, and had to wait until we got there at 1:00 pm. The trains are so unreliable that even when it left 3.5 hours late, it didn’t update anyone at the Varanasi station. In fact it did the same thing there that it did to us, it went by half hour and hour delays when it was obviously going to be at least 3 hours late. We felt bad for him, but we were paying him for the day anyway so it didn’t particularly matter in the big scheme of things. He drove us an hour into town and to our hotel where we told him we would be fine for the rest of the day walking around. We set up an appointment to meet someone from his company, Mr. Ramesh, at 5:30 at the hotel to take a boat ride on the Ganges and set on our way.
Near the hotel was a market where the girls of the group were particularly interested in finding scarves and shoes. Tolan and I were good sports and looked for music and movies while they did that. There were so many awesome movie packs for dirt cheap but they were in Hindi and I was seriously bummed. For example they had all of the Matrix movies and Die Hard movies on one disc for 40 cents. They had a Bourne/Oceans11/12/13 disc for the same price, and even all seven or so American Pie movies for that. If only they were in English I would have gone crazy, but hey, if that’s the worst problem I have for the whole semester, it hasn’t been too bad. Tolan and I were starving at this point having only had one legitimate meal in 48 hours which we weren’t even a fan of. We rushed everyone through their shopping and got directions to a place to eat nearby where we ordered tons of food, stuffed our faces and thoroughly enjoyed it. Local places to eat really proved to be delicious in India and all seemed to be fairly sanitary. The best part was that they all had “mineral water” or bottled water in these huge 1L or 1.5L bottles that were double sealed and charged approximately 25 cents on average for them. Back home at a quick shop, that much water would run 2 bucks every time.
After dinner we were running late for our boat ride so we grabbed bike rickshaws and headed to the hotel. The bikes were actually pretty slow, and they were none too happy to take our money at the end, even though we paid them what we agreed on. Everyone agrees on whatever price you tell them and without fail at the end asks for more. It is really quite frustrating. We got to the hotel and couldn’t find Mr. Ramesh so we assumed he came and left thinking we stood him up. We decided to take a rickshaw and find a different boat driver to take us on the sunset ride instead. We arrived to the end of the street where the rickshaws could no longer go, paid them, and went looking for a boat. As we were talking to someone and working out a price, this Indian guy runs up to us clearly sweating and out of breath and yells “I am your boat man Ramesh!” I felt TERRIBLE, apparently he had told the hotel to call him when we arrived and they couldn’t be bothered, so he came back to check on us, saw us pulling away in rickshaws and chased us down on foot. As it would turn out, we would all end up hating Ramesh, so the pity wouldn’t last long, but it was still sad that he had to chase us down like that for the grand total of 15 dollars he and the boat driver would get for the evening.
We walked toward the Ganges, following Ramesh, and arrived at the ghats. The ghats are a series of 80+ sets of stairways that face the sunrise and lead down into the river. They are used for daily live, prayer, bathing, cremation, cows, and god knows what else. There were people all over the place and we made our way through the crowds to our boat. Our rower got us going and Ramesh explained things to us in broken English the whole time. The first direction we headed was north toward the burning grounds where funerals are held. Here is where families bring their deceased loved ones, prepare them for burial and then cremate them in public. There were probably 8 fires going, each one representing one body inside. Apparently they pay almost 5 bucks a kilogram of wood, and they have to have 200 kilograms minimum to have a proper burning. This means families are spending more than a thousand dollars when loved ones die which is a huge amount. Considering that 70% of the country makes less than that in a year and is starving, I don’t know how they manage to save enough. We weren’t able to take pictures up close, but we did get close enough to distinguish the fires and the people surrounding them. We saw no individual burning bodies at this point though. It was amazing though how filthy the Ganges was and how much of a part of their life it was. The water was filled with trash, had a slick slime-like quality to it, and smelled terrible, yet they were bathing in it and drinking it. We asked Ramesh who said the water was perfectly safe and that only the areas with visible trash were unsafe. He said he drank from it all the time and that if you took a bottle of it today, in five years it would be perfectly clear. We looked at him like he was high on something and chose to ignore his comments from that point forward. The boat turned around and headed back to the main ghat where there was a ceremony every evening. Ramesh was pissing us off at this point refusing to give us directions to legitimately inexpensive stores and instead hyping up his tourist trap, company owned ones. We had enough of him, paid the agreed on fee and told him to leave. Having abandoned our boat, we went to the festival on foot. There were thousands of people watching as a few dancers chanted and burned incense. We had the most adorable kid come up to us and try and sell us thing and none of us, the hardened and stone faced, veterans of the word “no” could resist him. I bought a postcard or something I think and got a picture with him that I’ll post as soon as I can. After about a half hour of watching the ceremony and the people around it, we headed out to find some new form of entertainment.
Back toward the street, away from the festivities of the Ganges we found some small shops to do more shopping. The girls went in pursuit of more scarves while Tolan and I found a music shop that unfortunately had fixed and therefore high prices. He bought a couple of CDs, one of which I will have to steal from him shortly, and I got one called “My Bollywood Dance Party”. I know it sounds terrible, but the beats that go with their music, particularly the Bollywood music, are AWESOME. I haven’t listened to it yet, but hopefully it turns out to be good. At that point some guy came up and started following us, this happens a lot in foreign countries, and overheard the girls talking about wanting Henna. Henna is a temporary skin dye that looks like a tattoo for a while but only lasts a few weeks. The guy said he knew a place and proceeded to take us on a 30 minute walk through the back alleys to god knows where. We were pretty sure we were being led to our death, but it turned out his aunt or something owned a hostel and also did Henna for fun on the side. She got them started, it was going to take an hour or so, and Tolan and I had to find something to entertain ourselves. We told him we wanted DVDs, which he had the hardest time understanding. First he thought we meant CDs, and when we finally convinced him we wanted movies, he thought we meant porn. He insisted I leave the room with him to talk with me privately and then hilarity ensued. He didn’t find it appropriate to clarify porn in front of females and didn’t speak English well, so he made a provocative hand signal. I immediately understood what he thought we wanted and almost lost it laughing. I told Tolan who laughed equally hard and we then clarified to him that we wanted movies such as Avatar or Iron Man. He proved to be no help, but we got a laugh out of it. We ended up letting him take us to a shop that he worked for just so that he wouldn’t want any money from us for taking us to the hostel and we ended up getting some gifts there. I won’t mention what they are because it would be a giveaway J. When we got back to the henna hostel the girls were finished up and we decided to call it a night. We walked toward the main street, on the way getting Samosas, basically a delicious Indian empanada, and headed back to the hotel. Also on the way we were approached by a guy who was soliciting a government approved store. We had no idea what he was talking about until he whipped out a little baggie and started saying “Marijuana, Ecstasy, Opium, Heroin”. We were pretty shocked but continued on our way. We are definitely not in America anymore.
Back at the hotel everyone crashed pretty hard and called it a night. The next morning we had a sunrise boat tour of the Ganges that we didn’t want to miss.
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