Hotel Surya Palace Katra

... chin on my head. After that we did a 1.5hour yoga class. That was pretty cool I guess.

On our third and final day here we cruised along the Ganges at 6am to see the burning Ghats. This is where they do the public cremations. It's amazing to see the locals swimming and drinking the same water they ****, ****, wash and dump dead bodies in. In the afternoon I found an old ...

... part of India, and who are great devotees of ours. Live on earth. Uphold righteousness and evolve yourself spiritually so that you reach higher levels of consciousness. Once you have attained the appropriate level of consciousness you will merge into Vishnu and become one with him.'' So saying they blessed the girl. Sometimes later a very beautiful girl child was born to Ratankar and his wife. The couple named the child Vaishnavi. The girl right from her childhood ...

... assassinated. The family's palatial estate in Allahabad is now a museum and you can see it perfectly preserved. The house provided the grounds for the Indian National Congress and their decades long protests against the British Empire. You could look through the glass and see the hundreds of books Nehru and his family were reading, the luxurious lifestyle they lived (they had the first car in Allahabad) and even the rooms Gandhi stayed in during his visits. Indira's house was also ...

A night on a hard mud hut schoolroom floor provided rest after a 125km ride over gravel, sand, potholes, a mountain and some tarmac. It was beautiful 'though, from Uttar Pradesh into Madhya Pradesh; Gangetic plain to highland drama and down. Rocky outcrops with silhouetted monkeys and eagles against deep, long valleys and peaks turning blue into the distance greeted us on completion of a gruelling, annoyingly steep, long and bumpy slog up a tabletop mountain that ...

... also rose to the surface, which Shiva drank, turning his throat blue, to save the world. From this Nectar of Immortality, four drops fell to the earth. One of them fell in Prayag at the confluence of the Saraswati, the Ganges, and the Yamuna Rivers. When Jupiter, the sun, and the moon are in alignment, the Saraswati comes to life, and the nectar becomes available to humans--bathing in the river, it is said, brings liberation or moksha. As I took the night train from Patna to ...

Hello Again, So we are still alive and well but we have broken away from our Intrepid group a day early--thought we would skip the overnight train back to Delhi--tried that already once before and it wasn't the most fun. Instead we caught a flight from Varanasi to Delhi this afternoon for 499 rupees (about $10 US) and checked back in at the Swati. We will be heading to Goa tomorrow morning and will therefore be extending our time in Goa by two days. Can't wait to get to the ...

... the river and walked the streets window shopping and dodging cows all over the streets. Bought a small handmade foam bunny rabbit this guy was selling on the street. Very surreal looking but quite ingenious use of common materials! Heading to Varinasi tomorrow for the last few days of my tour. Hopefully I'll locate a faster internet connection soon...I know you all are on the edge of your seats for the Kama Sutra pictures! Cheers : )

Allahabad was where India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was born. We toured his family's house, now a museum, and it was very inspirational to see the rooms where Gandhi stayed and the balcony on which he worked when he was ...

Varanasi Up at 6am to get down the Ganga River to watch the sunrise. Hired a boat for one and a half hours to row up the river along the famous Ganga Ghats (Steps) where a number of funeral pyres were burning. Felt a bit intrusive doing this and watching people washing ...

... t want to buy, and say "NO" to children continuously who nagged around me saying some Japanese words... At the same time, I was amazed by the hardiness of people there who survive hard life. I also visited Sarnath, which is 10km north of Varanasi. Sarnath is said where Buddha delivered his first sermon after enlightenment in Bodh Gaya. That's why there were many Buddhist temples and ruins. Ruins had ...