Hotel Ok International Varanasi

... not all at the same time!!! I'm currently lost in the town having gone for a wander. I think the ganges is to my left so i'm sure i'll be ok!! Fingers crossed i'll come across a main road sooner or later - or the river itself, but until then i'm in an internet cafe telling you all about it!<br><br>This is also the town were you go to burn your dead, spread their ashes or if they died an unnatural death sink their body - all in the ganges...where it is ...

... being constantly harassed by touts for postcards, massages, hennas, food and anything basically. <br> <br>We had dinner on the rooftop at our place, two different types of curries and some Indian sweets which Em surprisingly wasn't too keen on, we now know how people lose so much weight in India because Em is finding it really difficult to eat, Chris is fine though so Ems probably just being a squinny but at the minute she is living on a diet of mango juice. Anyway after ...

... br>3. People who have been killed by the Cobra Snake<br>4. People with Leprosy<br>5. Sadhus, or Holymen.(When these men become Sahus and reject all material goods, they actually burn an effigy of themselves. Therefore, they have already "gone to the other side" and cannot be burned again.)<br><br>That evening we attended the riverside ceremony. Seven Brahmans made prayers and waved flaming bronze vases, with hooded Cobra Snakes attached.There was musical ...

... 1pm! madness! we are now in kathmandu! Can't believe India is over us &amp; by God was it fun! We learnt how to &amp; not to get ripped off, how to squat in a hole without wetting your feet, how to make 'chai', how not to get **** on by a passing cow, to avoid meat in food, to check all seals on water bottles before opening, how to read the menu with all its spelling mistakes ( it was like reading pudsie ryan in the far east e.g ala card) the list goes on &amp; on! Brilliant!

... well India. After a few days in this tranquil bubble of comparative inertia I found myself longing for the manic craziness of a good Indian city.<br><br>So it was with a toothy grin that I batted away the attention, seeking to find purchase in my wallet, and it was with a sense of elation that I stepped back into an overpriced rickshaw in Delhi. The sights and smells of India which rather fade the further North you go, were pungent and oppressive in the Chadni Chowk ...

... hold out her alms bucket for money and then she was exhausted. A human being suffering, this woman was in very poor shape. Later i took her some food, kissed her hand and left her a 100 rupees note, enough to buy about 15 small meals.<br><br>On one of our last nights here there was a fireworks display that started to light up the sky right outside our room at 3am and continued until the sun came up, we're not sure why.<br><br>There is a farmer who lives below us and ...

... time to Assi Ghat. We stopped at Baba's Chai shop which was really just a fake sadhu with a beaten up teapot but he was quite a character and was up for a chat telling us he'd been in the Australian newspapers and that he was famous on the internet, it's what a sadhu should be aspiring too i'm sure. After drinking his brew we realised that he washes his glasses in the feral Ganges river water and that we're now at risk of illness. We did a couple of Om Namah Shivayas ...

... We were pretty sure she didn't have this - but what then? Malaria? So when Maddie spiked another fever we realized we needed to do some investigating - as we would be in Kathmandu the next day we just hoped she would be well enough to travel. Varanasi is a busy city, with its more than fair share of traffic congestion and all the other street craziness, but it is the cleanest Indian city we have seen! Its amazing what an impact this has on ...

... die there, you immediately reach enlightenment, without the endless cycle of reincarnation. People, therefore, save up all their money for a trip to Varanasi to die. Families will send their elderly grandparents with one grandchild as a caretaker, to wait for the final days of death. After dying, they are then burned over funeral pyres which are going 24 hours a day. To burn a body on the ghats costs 3000 rupees (about $60) to buy<br>the right ...

... Yet, despite our precautions, we were yet again to be outwitted by the cunning of the Indian conman. In this case we were driven to an area of the city I had asked to be dropped in. I conceded the name of the hotel we were planning to stay in and was predictably enough told that it had shut down due to flooding. I asked to be taken there anyway which caused the driver to stop the taxi and angrily accuse me of calling him a liar. He affected a severe injustice and drove moodily to an ...