Burning bodies, sexy temples and some giant marble building…

My last overland border crossing of the trip (Nepal to India) involved several local buses, an entire day of travelling, a surprising display of efficiency from the Indian border formalities and the only time I’ll ever let a travel agent book my Indian train ticket without having done price research in advance. 300% commission pisses me off.

After spending the morning cycling around Lumbini, I took the bus back to Bhairahawa where I missed the jeep to the border because I was too slow getting off (I wish there had been a better reason but that’s really all there was to it) but I got pointed in the right direction for catching the local bus instead so I was soon back on the right track.

At the border, I spent my last Nepali rupees on oranges (that I ended up never eating, what a waste) before walking down to the immigration office to get stamped out of Nepal and onwards to India where you’re met by two soldiers, one that checks your passport for the Nepali exit stamp and one that checks for your Indian visa (totally necessary to have two people to do this job, I’m sure everyone can agree on) and three women in fluorescent vests to search your bags (not your big bag though, just your hand luggage. I think there’s a flaw in the system because whatever it is they are worried about people bringing in, I’m pretty sure people could fit a hell of a lot more of it into a 60L backpack than a canvas shopping bag and a daypack rucksack).

Walking down the chaotic dirty road, dodging cows and buses and trucks, I was preparing myself for a long wait and lots of forms to fill in at Indian immigration. But after less than 10min, my passport had been checked, stamped and returned to me and I’d gotten loads of information about onwards transport options and bus and taxi prices from one of the employees who worked there but didn’t have anything to do. See how easy things can be when there aren’t three people to do the same job?!

Then it was time to find a way to get to Varanasi. I’d come to learn (from the owner of my Lumbini guest house and from the Indian border official with nothing to do except provide me with helpful information) that there was no direct overnight bus from Sunauli (despite my ancient LP telling me otherwise) so I knew I’d have to take a local bus to Gorakhpur and then connect to a train or a bus there. Armed with the knowledge from the Indian border official that it’s a 3-4 hour bus to Gorakhpur, I thought it made more sense to get one of the travel agents to confirm a ticket onwards from there for me so I wouldn’t potentially risk getting stuck in Gorakhpur for a night. It was a bit more expensive than I expected but when I later learned that he had charged 300% commission I was well pissed off with myself that I hadn’t looked into the train prices in advance. And at him for being a greedy asshole.

But it was on the way to Gorakhpur, catching an awesome sunset while squeezed into half a seat at the back of the public bus for 4 hours that I realised how much I’d missed this country while I’d been trying to fall in love with Nepal. Maybe part of the reason I didn’t fall for Nepal was that I’m just still way into India and I just wasn’t open to letting any other country replace that as my number 1 at this moment in time.

Safely in Gorakhpur, with incorrect information about how close to the train station the bus had stopped, I had an uneventful 4 hour wait at the train station and an uneventful ride to Varanasi where some determined rickshaw bargaining was successfully done on arrival before I was ready to explore Varanasi. I stayed at Zostel, a hostel-chain in north India that is very much like the hostels I called home all over Central- and South America. It’s a 15min walk from that ghats which is a bit annoying but it was nice being surrounded by backpackers again.

I spent most of my time in Varanasi walking around, people watching and trying to capture the essence of this place in photos. Which, I’ve decided, is impossible. Varanasi is all about the impressions – the sight of bodies wrapped in white cloth being carried on stretchers through the narrow streets down to the burning ghats, of cows sleeping in the middle of the road, of Hindus queuing for the golden temple, of people bathing in the Ganga and washing clothes in the Ganga or trying to sell you boat tours on the Ganga. It’s such a chaotic place, there are so many people. If you stop for too long to take a picture or look at the sari fabrics in the shop window you’ll get walked into by 4 pedestrians and will only narrowly escape getting run into by a motorbike or a cycle rickshaw. I loved Varanasi, I loved the sunrise from the boat on the river and I loved the amazing lassis at Blue Lassi (which isn’t in my old-skool LP but must be in some LP judging by the amount of foreign tourists in there) which it’s worth getting totally lost in the little unmarked streets and alleys trying to find (I recommend the saffron & dried fruits and banana & pomegranate options).

I could have stayed in Varanasi longer but I’d decided I wanted to see the kama sutra temples at Khajuraho before going to see that giant white marble building in Agra that’s pretty famous and that meant moving on a few days early (stupid train not leaving every day of the week).

On the train ride there, we caught the lunar eclipse through the metal bars on the windows which was pretty special. At Khajuraho, I joined back up with a Colombian couple I’d met at the station in Varanasi and we split the rickshaw into town where we eventually found an affordable guest house. It was early (6.30am) so I chilled on the rooftop, drinking chai with the guy who ran the guesthouse who tried to give me advice on what to do and see but which I found to be based mainly around the need for me to spend the entire day on the back of his motorcycle. That’s not what I had come to town for. So I ignored most of his advice and went to the western temples in the morning and the eastern temples at noon and the guidebooks are right when they say the western temples can’t be missed (they are also worth the entrance fee even if the guy running my guesthouse doesn’t think so). The sculptures are beautifully carved and the subject matter sometimes defy gravity and average-human-flexibility and just general appropriateness (why did that horse suddenly need to be there??!!). But I did such a good job keeping focused on the art historical merit of the work and it wasn’t until someone was trying to sell some particularly rude key chains that I cracked up (and had to fight the urge to buy them as souvenirs for absolutely everyone I know). I giggled to myself about them for hours because I’m mature like that.

I also went to the old town which was really surprising – all pastel coloured buildings and retro bicycles – so I walked around there for a while too. But by mid-afternoon, I’d been joined by so many randoms starting the exact same conversations and refusing to leave me alone that it was starting to feel really exhausting so I took refuge in a cafe and shut the world out for a bit. They kept saying they just wanted to practice their English but they all spoke it fluently so I’d call bullshit on that so I don’t know what they were trying to achieve other than get the blonde foreign girl to feel really foreign and wishing for her normal hair colour back.

From Khajuraho I had to take a daytime train to Agra which actually turned out to be a nice experience. I watched the landscape through the window bars, stuck my head out the door between the carriages for some serious wind-in-hair action, ran into 3 people who’d been on my Varanasi-Khajuraho train, made friends with a lovely family (the mom had the dad go buy an extra ice-cream for me and then roped her daughter into being our translator. I’m now in several selfies with her and her brother who was happy using my backpack as a pillow on the top bunk). And then, as we got closer to Agra, women came through selling glitter snow globes of the Taj! I totally wanted one! So awesomely tacky!

I just spent one night in Agra, which still gives you plenty of time to go to the Taj at sunrise, get sent back to the ticket office several hundred meters up the road to deposit laptop, scissors and a juice box (I’m curious what kind of damage they thought I’d be able to inflict on the Taj with apple juice), make it back to the Taj, see the Taj, walk around the Taj, take photos of the Taj, leave the Taj, have breakfast, visit the fort, search unsuccessfully for the mirror room, chill at a rooftop restaurant, take sunset pictures of the Taj from the rooftop restaurant, have dinner at the rooftop restaurant, and hang out with awesome travellers you get chatting to at the rooftop restaurant. But it really is a beautiful building and as much as I might have wanted to say that it isn’t worth visiting if you’ve seen other people’s photos, it totally is.