More Adventure and I Still Hate Delhi

The trip from Bundi to Varanasi was long, tiring and confusing. All of these things however are normal for India. It starts in Bundi where we showed up to the busstand at like 10 expecting there to be a bus waiting. Nope. Instead there are people laying in the shadows and "platform" of the station. As soon as we stand still the "hellos" and "what your country?" start. Not really in the mood we make our way over to a man shouting "Kota" for a shared jeep. We get the price down to Rs20 and have the experience of taking a shared jeep for an hour. Not too bad. It was faster than the bus anyway. We get to the train station and get a general seating ticket to New Delhi. Let me tell you something about general seating. Its a free for all. You know those pictures that you see of the trains in India with people hanging on the side and sitting n the roof? Yes, that's it. We thought we were going to have to sit in the door all night. Luckily some young man made room for us. However while it was nice to be able to sit, 12-13 hours in the same position, trying to get some rest and making sure you aren't getting robbed is most exhausting. Did I mention that the train arrived in Kota at 1:50am? We finally get to Delhi late and go straight to the tourism office and get our next train ticket to Varanasi. We chill in Delhi for a bit and get a pizza. When it is time to catch our train we head to the Old Delhi station (different from the one we arrived at) and find that the train number on our ticket is not up on the board. Ten minutes til our train leaves we go onto the platforms and ask where are train is. We are directed to a platform that has a different train number on it but it turned out to be the same one. This time we had bunks in a sleeper. I will show you the bunks in a bit. I don't want to describe them. I would do them justice. Not that the pictures will either. This train ride (also over night) was not as bad. We just should have packed more food. We actually managed to sleep even with three fans buzzing near our heads, noise from the train (because there were no windows) and the heat. This train arrived 3 hrs late. No biggie. Then we had to deal with sketchy ass auto rickshaw drivers who mostly are wrapped up in some crime syndicate. We were not dropped off where we wanted and almost gave up finding the Guest House we were looking for. Justine ended up suffering from heat exhaustion and we chilled for the rest of the day and slept in today. I think I like Varanasi so far, but I will let you know later.

Train



Varanasi