We are sailing...

I haven't been able to get to a computer for a few days to blog. Its been otherworldly to be honest. We had an incredibly long day yesterday and today really, the early mornings are killing me :)

It started with an overnight train ride from the lovely little village we were staying in (it was great to lounge there by the pool and swim in a surprisingly clean bit of river for a couple of days, India is a bit of a rubbish dump to be honest)..

We left the train at 6am and then took a suspensionless bus (ouch, really bad when you need to go for a pee) for about 3 hours to the river Ganges (The Ganga or something the Indians call it) from their we split up four of us on each really slow row/sail boats crewed by two men each down the river.

It was unbelievably tranquil and quite an experience, we were all laying on the blanket covered boat with a roof for shade as the guys rowed and navigated us down the river.

After a long day on the boat, we pulled ashore and the guys set up tents for us and a camp and cooked us a meal, they are of course getting paid, but somehow it still felt a little bit like we were the rich westerners and they were just our slaves or something, not that they made us feel hat way or anything, but it just felt a bit weird to be waited on hand and foot.

The night in the middle of nowhere was great, it was so good to be able to see the stars clearly and be away from the insanity of the city. Even so I awoke to the sounds of crazy distant music and chanting that was being washed towards us from a nearby town.

Back on the river and halfway along we stop for more food (there was one boat that was just a sort of floating kitchen!) We saw a few bobs in the water of far away douphfins that live in the river and are apparently blind. I'm not surprised as we are sailing towards Varanasi where the Indians burn their dead and throw the ashes and any left over body parts in the river! As well as the rest of the crap that must be in there, it didn't stop our oarsman drinking from it though.

I'm now in Varanasi and we have just been to see some bodies burning (I had to jump out of the way as a dead body was bustled down the street past me).

Had a ride back to the hotel on a horse drawn rickshaw with Ben and nearly died we hit 3 other cycle rickshaws and an ox on the way back. If I haven't already mentioned, there is absolutely no rules to the road and you weave in an out of oncoming traffic as well as cows and buffalo that just gently amble in the midst of the chaos. This place really is quite insane.