First contact with Varanasi

At the Mughai Sarai train station, where I disembarked the train, my indian friends were sorry to see me go. They had to help me to find the right place to go down, since there are no announcements. When you know the time you're supposed to arrive, you can look carefully at the name of the stations. But when you're as late as I was, there was no way to know.

Goodbyes were hard, as always. But it's impossible to do them in calmness. A white guy? All the taxi drivers, all the rickshaw drivers are trying to lure you in their vehicule. Fortunately, my friends could tell them to go see somewhere else if I were there.

Apparently, I had to go for 28 km to get to the hotel. It took more than one hour. I was supposed to get there in the morning, but in the end, I got to Varanasi while the sun was setting.

There was the traffic jams, the buses, the bikes, the rickshaws we needed to go around while honking as much as possible. And after, we drove on small dirt streets which were testing the suspension of the car.

Good to know : if the hotel has hot water, you may need to ask at the reception for them to turn it on...

Varanasi is just an endless maze of small streets, a labyrinth where even some locals can get confuse sometimes. At the hotel, they sent me to the Brown Bakery, a restaurant belonging to the owner of the hotel. They gave me a handmade map. What seemed to be a big street on the map ended up being a small alley. Needed to guess. But getting lost was part of the fun.

After some confusion, I found the infamous restaurant, where you can find anything on the menu. But if you ask for anything special, you might hear the words "don't have". That's the way it is.

In the evening, after 10 PM, the lights go off in most parts of the city. Finding one's way back in darkness is... hard. But I made it...