Nadesar Palace Varanasi

... man. Then right next to the boat floated the body of a child. I nearly puked, the row boat man told me that some bodies aren't cremated. Children and holy men because they have no sins. And lepors because they are dirty (!?)

I took another walk along the river bank and got to the main one and was offered a massage for 10 rupees (7p). Now my last massage, which wa amazing cost me 200 rupees, so i thought bargain. I thought wrong. It was actually ...

Arriving four and a half hours late wasnt exactly the best start to the day but at least we had a better nights sleep on the train in a slightly higher class with no screaming children!
After dringin around for an hour and a half, we finally found somewhere decent to stay and booked ourselves on a boat trip at sunset down the Ganges.
Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India darrylandnicola

... tier groups across form each other. Therefore, there is a cluster of 8 beds, six on one side of the aisle and two on the other. There are at least 8 or nine clusters on each coach. There are no walls or doors and only sometimes have curtains involved. Just two sheets, a pillow and a heavy wool blanket. Voila!, your sleeper car. Barb and I lucked out, a bit by getting the two lower bunks below the three tier. We had two people on the beds above us and our bags ...

... wrapped in white cloth and set below a huge stack of wood. Low caste (special class of Dalits) workers are specifically those who do this work (a position passed from father to son), preparing the body and working the crematorium. Women are no longer allowed to attend the cremation ceremonies, due to the restrictions on Sati (throwing one's self on your husbands funeral pyre), and they are forced to wait above the ghats as men tend ...

... sacred places with idols of Nagas and at anthills. In some places, people fast from sunrise to sunset. Unmarried women believe that praying to the Nagas will help them in getting good husbands. Milk, betel leaf, betel nut, tender coconuts, turmeric powder, puffed paddy, jaggery, flower bunches and tender leaves of palm and areca trees are offered to please the snakes.

On this day many sadhus and snake charmers brought snakes including cobras into the ...

... of the popular anklets for babies for the ones that are growing right now back in Oz. I bought a hand-painted mandala wall hanging and book on Kabbalah and the Tree Of Life and Nads was up for an idilies and dosa cookbook. We met a sadhu with a parrot, one with a monkey on his shoulder and another with a cobra and also had to dodge a large hiccuping cow in the backstreets. Nadine braved the street food again in the chowk, it's hard not to munch out all day with the ...

... bowls and using them to look for any valuables that might have survived the flames. A sort of morbid panning for gold. I interrupted the man speaking to me and asked him about the men in the water. He said, 'Yes, they make a lot of money from this. Many people are burned with jewelry still on their bodies.' The pyre nearest to us that was just starting to burn must have contained a tall person because I could see what looked like feet covered by a cloth sticking out from ...

... are almost impossible to navigate, I’d get lost about once a day however the Indian people were as ever very helpful and you’d soon be back on track. I also took the liberty of trying the local bhang lassie’s, one evening I had two and after four hours nothing happened so I went to bed and promptly slept for 16 hours, I guess they took effect once I was asleep.

... Many of India's most famous musicians, poets, philosophers, and writers resided or reside in Varanasi like the mystic poet Kabir, bansuri flute musician Hariprasad Chaurasia and shehnai master Bismillah Khan Sahib. The great Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar and vocalist Girija Devi were born in Varanasi. It's often referred to as 'the city of light', 'the city of learning' and 'the holy city of India' and according to legend was founded around 5,000 ...

... spiritualism and the importance of holistic thinking I found myself stood on one leg and chanting 'Om'. We stood for some time in this ridiculous posture, overlooking the Ganges whilst Akay sat on the floor in front of us doing something dextrous with his fingers and nostrils. More postures followed and we learned a seven-stage movement that we were instructed to perform ten times each morning after rising. Eventually he had us doing something more akin to exercise before decreeing a ...