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  Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
Monday, February 8, 2010

    I had pretty much a compartment to myself when the train back from Allahabad to Varanasi finally turned up, so it was great to spread out while drinking tea, eating biscuits while the flat, dry Indian villages of cow shit pyramids and scruffy urchin children whizzed by. Getting off the train wasn't quite so enjoyable due to being followed again, and while telling the group of three men to piss off and leave me alone, I walked into a bamboo scaffolding, twatting myself full pelt on the left temple. I was irate and could quite happily have leathered a mincey, persistent little prick who looked like an expired matchstick in his tight, noncey white outfit and unusually dark head as he followed me to the tuktuk stand. He even climbed aboard the tuktuk which took me to the hotel so as to get some commission but thankfully got sod all as I knew the hotel staff and they told him to do one. I hate these bastards, but unfortunately Varanasi is full of the opportunistic fuckers and sadly I had to endure them a while longer.

    I came back to Varanasi purely to meet Jo, a friend of mine from Kendal who had been traveling India since early January with one of her mates from Doncaster. I wasn't going to bother hanging around initially, mainly because I get bored very easily, but I was long overdue seeing a friendly face so I am glad I did. We met on the roof top of their expensive hotel (15 times more expensive than mine) which they had booked because, similarly to me, India was starting to take its toll on them and they needed a bit of luxury. We had a few beers and some lunch before walking back along the ghats in the direction of my hotel, stopping off for a couple of minutes at one of the lesser burning ghats so the girls could get their first peek at a public cremation. They were totally unfazed to start with, but that all changed when a blackened log dislodged itself and out of the flames came a bright red, bulbous burning foot. I had well and truly seen enough body burning, being satisfied with the few minutes I had already spent there in the past days, so was keen to press on and was glad when the poor buggers leg freaked the girls out enough so we could go. We walked on a while, dodging cows, ignoring boat touts and watching the devout locals bathing in the brown, filthy Ganges river until we came to the main ghat where I had seen a Bollywood crew doing some filming on a previous day. On this occasion though there were no bangtidy young Hindi girls being all thespian like and dramatic, this time instead there was an old Hindi woman curling out a massive sloppy dump right in the middle of the pavement in full view of everyone. The men regularly piss all over the place, and the kids the same, but never have I seen a fully grown woman wrench up her sari, squat in the centre of a walkway and take a massive shit. It was fantastic, I love this crazy stuff. Dirty old bitch.

    We bought a bottle of 8PM Indian scotch whiskey if such a thing is possible, and took it to the roof of my shabby hotel and got absolutely leathered. It was so good to be with women who weren't either odd or ignorant, and northerner's to boot, that I had such a great time talking about things from back home, Africa and all the strange stuff that has happened on each of our trips that I had no idea how drunk I was getting. When I came to stand up my legs almost gave way and I stumbled towards the edge of the roof, almost falling over it to a certain crippling. We left the hotel when I finally managed to negotiate the stairs and stumbled our way through the dark, winding alleys of Varanasi in search of more alcohol. As we neared the main road, we were stopped in our tracks by a procession of black shirted men that streamed scarily towards us. They were almost in a trance, the lot of them slapping at their chests with their left arms in unison, creating an eerie drum like thud along with their chanting. If this wasn't enough to freak out a trio of very pissed, and slightly stoned young Brits, then the six boys behind the first troop dressed in blood soaked white vests, slapping their wounded chests with great vigour and looking slightly demonic at the same time certainly did the trick. It was very surreal. A horse dressed in all manner of robes and shiny jewelery which I confused to be an elephant then rode behind the procession, which was in fact a Muslim ceremony of mourning, and we left the alleys quite perplexed and intimidated. We got more alcohol that was hugely unnecessary then took a cycle rickshaw to Assi Ghat for food. There is only enough room for two westerners on the rickshaw seats, despite the fact Indians can cram about 17 of themselves onto them, so I sat on the drivers seat instead much to his dismay. It turned to both our dismay when Jo and Helen grabbed my boxers and yanked them that far up my arse I thought they had ripped me a snatch, this in turn made me grab hold of the poor rickshaw driver, dragging him down and grinding him onto my lap unintentionally, and the next 10 minutes were spent with the girls laughing, me wimpering and the old dude peddling us cursing and wishing he had never picked us up in the first place.

    On my last day in Varanasi I was hungover and fed up. I met the girls later on for a boat trip down the Ganges for better views of the city and to observe the crazy Indians washing away their sins. I thought it apt to follow suit, when in Rome and all that, so I stuck my two fingering digits into the brown torrent of feces and hopefully washed away a good 14 years of knicker fiddling. How dipping anything into a river that has more than 3000 times the safe amount of poo particles for bathing can wash away any kind of sin is beyond me, its along the lines of believing tonguing a prostitutes bum will give you fresh breath, but if thats what they believe then who am I to abscond from following suit. I felt filthy though after just putting my fingers in for a second, let alone washing myself, brushing my teeth or even drinking it so I think I will leave them too it. We then grabbed some tea together before I headed back to my hotel to watch Arsenal play Chelsea on the shitty foyer TV. I got the first half, and then the little wanker working there said it was time to switch off the telly and go to bed. I was obviously pissed off, but Varanasi had drained me so much that all I could muster up was the energy to call him an ugly cunt and slink off to bed in a mood and moan into my diary. Varanasi was fantastic to see, i must admit, but It is such an immense culture shock and place of constant hassle by touts that It wearies the soul and exhausts you like very few other places I have ever visited. I am glad I waited to see Jo, but I am suffering for it now as my enthusiasm has hit a bit of a low and needs something sharpish to pick it back up again.

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