Another marathon drive - the worst yet! We left Khajuraho at 6 a.m. & reached Varanasi at 7.30 p.m. We'd had only 2 brief stops for something to eat, once at a less than clean roadside dhaba, once at the (reasonably) "Tasty Bite" & another stop or 2 to deal with a flat tyre - not our car, but 1 of 2 others we travelled in convoy with for safety. Apparently it was bandit country we were travelling - the bandits make their own guns & have been known to kidnap & highway rob tourist cars.
Luckily we had 3 days to recover from the nightmare drive before setting off back to Delhi. Meanwhile, Anil was heading straight back to Delhi which would take him 3 days!
Our hotel was just OK. The staff were pretty annoying though. They didn't knock at the door before coming in & kept turning up with things we already had ( they tried to bring us 7 towels, one at a time) in the hope of extra tips, which they actually asked for! We stayed 2 nights then, when told that we'd have to check out early on our last morning due to a wedding & we should just go out for a few hours, we decided that enough was enough . We moved for our last night to another wonderful Hotel Surya with a balcony overlooking courtyard gardens.
As for sightseeing, on Thursday we visited the Benares Hindu University, set in a lovely tree lined campus, followed by a walk across the Ganges on a pontoon bridge (very perilous), to look at the Ramnagar Fort at dusk. Friday was temple day - we visited 4 in total: the New Vishwanatha Temple, Haruman's Temple, the Tulsi Manas Temple & the Durga Temple. We learnt that people here wash & dress the statues of gods & goddesses every morning, bedeck them with jewellery & flowers & then prepare them for sleep every evening, even going so far as to make up a bed for them. This happens both in temples & in homes.
We then moved on to the Muslim/"Moghul" Quarter where the silk industry for all of India is based. Families live & work in 1 building with workshops (making pattern cards, weaving, making hats, sewing clothes & bedlinen etc.) on the ground floor & living quarters on the upper floors. It looked like sweatshop labour to us & we discovered that some of the children never went to school. Shopping for the finished articles, however, turned out to be a very civilised affair conducted while seated on rugs & cushions with a chai to hand. We further indulged ourselves with a visit to the nearby Haifa Hotel where we dined on fallafel & hummus - Howard was tiring already of curries, morning, noon & night.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment