Palace on Steps Varanasi

... witnessed the water burial of a young boy yesterday. He was apparently under 10, and was lovingly washed, weighted and given to the Ganges by his parents. Very sad, I am glad I wasn't there. There has been an outbreak of Japanese Encephalitis here in Uttar Pradesh recently. More on that later.

While photos of the Ghats was prohibited, there seemed to be no problem with my taking photos of the floating body near our boat. CAUTION! I ...

... moment and then it curved southeast through the Pacific Ocean. The clouds stayed away for the duration of the event which meant we could see the total eclipse. This was magical too because every morning since we have been in Varanasi there's been cloud cover over the sun, except for today.Yippieee!!!

We made our way up onto our rooftop and joined five other eclipse gazers for the great celestial show. Many people of Varanasi flocked to the rooftops to share the ...

... were performing puja on the banks of the Ganges as offerings to the rising sun. At the moment there's a Shiva festival on so we were blessed to see the ghats filled with pilgrims, many of them dressed in orange, who had come a very long way to bathe in the Ganges and were celebrating in a jubilant Hindu frenzy. Some of them would have waited their whole lives to come here. Stare bear factor was high as was incense and burning cow dung aroma. We moved around to get ...

... bald spot, draw on some sideburns and color his remaining hair. Its hard not to stare-bless him. Especially if they have black ears, neck and comb lines on the forehead. I saw him pre-shower and post was not much better. What is wrong with these peeps? Right I'm going bald do I shave it off, buy a wig, comb it over or put my head in a bucket of tar. And while we are on the subject. Gentlemen of Varanasi you are foul, vile, vain, disgusting creatures ...

... We did meet two cool American girls on the plane, Jolie and Maria. We ended up hanging out with them quite alot of the time for our inital few days in Kathmandu. Kathmandu is great in comparison to the cities we visited in India! So chilled and relaxed - a real delight. Entering Nepal we had to learn to deal with load shedding (reduced electricity). Its amazing how different a place can look when you cut out the power! Needless to say we got lost a couple times on our first few nights in ...

... the airport you really get a sense of how varied the culture of India really is. There are not only ethnic/cultural differences but also religious diversity. We see Hindus, muslems, budhists, christians, Jainitsts, etc. The majority of women wear colorful sari type dresses that make them look very elegant-dark skin, dark eyes and brightly colored dresses or saris. The flight to Varanasi is only an hour long but we enter a different climate zone. Although the ...

After a rough sleep, we woke at about 6:30am, so as to be awake when the train got in at 7am. Shortly before 7am, the train pulled up at Varanasi City. We began to get off, but the locals on the trains motioned us to stay, assuring us Varanasi was the next stop. We weren't sure, but after checking with just about every local we could find both on and off the train everyone agreed that we wanted the next station.

Well, 7am came and went and we were still ...

... and we couldn;y see the sun cos it was pretty cloudy/ pollutiony!! Very pleasant! One of the ghats is for burning people and when we visited one of the english guys we weerre with said that we were getting covered in mdead people's smoke... Yuck! No privacy in death though and we were just pottering about as usual.

Everyone swims and bathes in the Ganges cos the water is so holy that it is totally pure! But we saw 2 dead cows, a ...

... 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 ...