Friday, 8 April 2011

Varanasi "Brace your self"... 25.03.2011 (because i am so behind im going to start dating the blogs :))

I'm sorry if this post isnt very good, this is the second attempt. The first time a computer man came along and pulled out a wire, resulting in my computer blacking out and me loosing everything..."ooo woow, were you writing lots?"....yes, yes i was. Oh well.

Underneath the title Varanasi in the lonely planet it tells me to brace myself for one of the most blindingly colourful, unrelentingly chaotic and apologetically indiscreet places on earth. . This did nothing but scare me. It seems to be like Marmite, either people love it or they hate it.

What if i hate it !?!

The train journey was ok, but everyone was staring at us. That i can generally handle, but then a guy came and sat next to me who was nothing but annoying. I just tried my hardest to ignore him, and did not give him my phone number or email address (how ever persistent he was).

Finally arrived, its the first place I've felt really nervous about going. Stepped off the train and straight away a man started talking to us and wanting us to follow him. We tried to ignore him, we walked out and while Giselle was telling him to go away an officer opened a barrier for us to walk through. On the other side were a few other scared looking tourists and a nice tourist information's. They gave us a map, pointed us in the right direction and told us the name of the street we wanted to be on.
Off we went to brace the swarm of rickshaw drivers. We got in the auto rickshaw and told them where we wanted to go. First they said they couldn't take us there, then that it was a big place were abouts did we want dropping. I was getting stressed. "just somewhere on that street" we told them. It carried on for a while. "Just drop them off and then they'll pay you" one of their friends laughed. It felt like they were being rude so i grabbed my rucksack and headed of to find a different rickshaw man who was actually going to take us some where. After a few more arguments we got one.

As we were driving down the street i gradually began to relax, this doesn't look so bad ! Colour every where, it was busy but in an exciting way! got of the rickshaw put our rucksacks on and headed in the direction he pointed us. Fabric shops filled the streets, along with rickshaw drivers shouting at us and cows just wondering as they please. We got so happy we even started singing "noo, nooo" at the persistent shop keepers, one of them even laughed at us.

WUHOOOOO I DON'T HATE IT ! :D

As our rucksacks began to get heavier we decided to go find our hotel. In the distance we saw a young guy who looked like he could be English, we headed in his direction. "Are you English?" we asked maybe a bit too enthusiastically. "Yes" he laughed. His name was Daniel, he told us where he had stayed and we had a short but sweet conversation with him before he had to leave to go to Pushkar. We didn't end up staying where he stayed but found a nice place called Puja guest house, with an amazing view of the Ganges river and of all the monkeys that were jumping from rooftop to rooftop. This is also where we met Sambo one of the waiters who liked to talk alot, but was very lovely all the same.

No comments:

Post a Comment