venturesome varansi

since its been some days, i will start where i stopped...

we were supposed to take a taxi from pushkar to ajmer and further the train from ajmer to agra to see the taj mahal...

Gopal, the guy who booked our taxi and whos slogan was "tired of being ripped of?", said the taxi is gonna arrive at 2.30 am(!!) so we have enough time to get to ajmer bc our train was at 3.45am...

2.30am. 3 girls. with huge backpacks. in the dark. in the middle of nowhere. and it smells like shit. (literally).

no taxi.

2.45am. no taxi.

we call gopal and he goes "yeah yeah dont worry. the taxi is on the way"

sure.

3am. no taxi. we start to be pissed.

after about 9 phonecalls to gopal, who was such a flake, the taxi came with squealing tires...

and another near-death experience started.. after a few kilometers he stops infront of a semi naked indian on the road.

the man opens the door and tells us to move over.

turns out this is our actual taxidriver who forgot to set up his alarmclock.

thing is... carlights are overrated in india.

so we are driving on the road and suddenly there is a car infront of us which you cant see at all in the middle of the night...also light posts are overrated.

trucks are passing us and they are so big, we are swinging off the road...

i was sure that nirvana is about to come.

so we keep flying over the road of pushkar, scared to death with a naked guy in the car. incredible india.

we finally made it to the train and to agra..

to make a long story short..we saw the taj mahal. it really was impressive.

same night we take the train to jhansi to head to orchha..

and orchha was great. just a few cars, no honking, a lot of temples and the nicest host in our hostel we have ever had. (YES DJ!!we talk about you guys!)

we rented bikes, drove to a nature resort and outlasted the monsoon in a temple...

next stop varansi.

after a 19 hours trainride, 43 degrees, no AC (never again), we survived also this trip and had one bottle of water for the three of us for about 5 hours bc the train was delayed, we arrived in varansi.

craziest town i have seen in india so far. its one of the holiest places for hindus where they get burned after their death to reach nirvana. It is believed that once nirvana is achieved, a person will achieve the afterlife, rather than reincarnating.

so 24/7 you see smoke coming up from the ganges or you walk through the street and they carry the wrapped bodies of their relatives right next to you.

talking about the ganges...the official limit where water is not considered safe for bathing is 500 faecal coliforms per 100ml...the ganges has 1,5mio. faecal coliforms...

scary.

so we have 3 more days here in varansi who will be full of surprises and intense. cause we get the kind of feeling thats the thing with india... you never know how its gonna hit you.