Tomorrow I will be transformed from a Pollywog to a Shellback when we cross the equator!
Tomorrow is Neptune day and so I will keep you all updated as to how that goes. I don’t have class and all day we have Neptune day festivities!
Today was a class day. Also tonight is the crew talent show, so that’ll be fun J
March 8th
I had been tossing and turning all night sleeping on the top tier of the nook. It was a rough night and it got really cold as soon as people started to get off. I was wearing jeans and a tee shirt but I had no blanket so I had my arms for warmth. It was crazy how quick it got freezing cold, and so around 6am I gave up sleeping and sat on the lower tier because moving around and waking up was making me already warmer. When I woke up I had to use the bathroom and oh was that fun. The bathroom is a small room with a sliding door. The “toilet” is a hole in the bottom of the cart which is moving and I could see the tracks. You place your feet on two small pieces of wood and squat. Since people don’t aim well it was very dirty and smelly. There was no sink to wash your hands, but thank goodness I had brought some bath and body works hand sanitizer which smelled beautifully.
At around 8am we wondered when we might be arriving in Varanasi so I asked two men who were in suits in hopes they knew English. They said because the train was delayed we should get to Varanasi in about 5 hours… The train was pretty empty so we all were able to find a place to sit near a window and we all enjoyed a window view of the Indian countryside. I decided after some time looking out the window I wanted to go back to sleep for a bit. Me and 2 other girls all went back to bed for a few hours. Since it was getting warmer it became easier to fall asleep, especially with the small breeze coming from the open windows. When we all woke up we were all starving, but the train had no food cart. We had at this point been on the train for 9 hours and we were getting antsy. With hardly anyone on the train w could see even more of the train we had slept in. We could see mice and rats crawling on the floor, we could see the piles of trash and the dirt everywhere. We enjoyed more time looking out the windows and even though our situation kind of sucked we made the best of it and took pictures, played games and played with some of the kids that came onto the train who were very curious about us. They showed us some Hindu music videos and even though they spoke hardly any English we sang some songs we all knew.
The girls got off and along the tracks we made a lot of stops in the middle of nowhere for 15-20 minutes at a time. But we were able to get some beautiful pictures and it was beautiful to see the little huts, children playing and the farms. Some people sold us some drinks through the bars of the train and we all got some mango juice. It wasn’t food, but it definitely helped. At around 2:30pm, we arrived in Varanasi, India and was immediately overwhelmed by the mass of thousands of people all around the train station!
We didn’t know this but on the 9th of March is a big Hindu religious holiday. One of the biggest ones ( Including Holi the festival of colors which we missed by one week!!!! It would have been amazing to see! Next time J). With this almost all hotels were booked for leading up to it and there was thousands of people here for it. We got out of the train station in a blur. We were all pretty amazed by the amount of people that could be in one area. We were surrounded by tuktuk drivers when we left the station who wanted to rip us off. But during all of this an older man came up to us and said he would take us to a good restaurant with Wi-Fi. We had a hotel book but we wanted to make sure it was still booked. We had trouble finding it online when we got to the restaurant. But we ate and enjoyed Wi-Fi. After our tuktuk driver (who waited for us the whole time we ate), offered to bring us to the hotel. We got to our hotel and when we tried to check in they told us they were booked and didn’t have a reservation under any of our names.
Thank goodness for our very nice tuktuk driver who took us under his wing after this and made sure we would find a hotel for the night. At first we tried to find one for 2 nights. Him and the boy he was training made it their goal to find us a hotel. It got to the point that the price had to become very little of a priority but just having a place to stay. We tried at least 2o places with no luck, not even including the places our driver called to ask. After a lot of looking we found a place near the Ganges, it was expensive, but at that point we had to suck it up because we were losing time in Varanasi and it was almost sunset. Our hotel was very clean, had a shower (we were so happy to look forward to a shower!!!) and had a rooftop restaurant!
We checked into our hotel and then went right away to do a sunset boat tour of the Ganges. The streets just outside of the Ganges river are not very well cleaned and everywhere there is burning trash and animals roaming around. We got down the river and negotiated a small boat to take the four of us to see the river, the cremations and the ceremony that happens at night on the river which is a series of dances and offerings that are lied out and also some fire rituals. We also passed by some funerals and cremations of bodies that are dipped into the river and then placed inside of a pile of logs to be burned. The ash is then placed into the river. There are some exceptions to people who cannot be cremated on the river, animals, children, monks, pregnant women and those who died from snake bites cannot be cremated and so they are just wrapped and put into the river by their families. So while floating down the river I was pretty nervous because I was not interested in seeing a dead body floating down the Ganges. Luckily I saw none. The ceremony don on the stage on the Ganges went on for about an hour. It’s such a holy place and you could see that in the amount of people here for the festival and the time put into the ceremony.
After our boat tour we walked the streets by the river, we met a Baba. A Baba is a holy man who lives off of nothing and lives on the river. They collect donations for their living expenses but they live off of nothing and don’t even wear clothing. So these naked men covered in ash walk around and they believe they have special powers given to them by gods. One man we met believes Shiva gives him the power to lift 25kg with his penis. Our tuktuk driver brought us to him and he went on to show us in one of the most bizarre things I have ever experienced. After we met a Baba who hasn’t sat in 20 years and sleeps standing. We then walked back to our hotel and on the way we took out money. On the way to get money it was dark and I stepped on and tripped over a dead rat. It sent shivers throughout my body. We ate dinner on our rooftop restaurant at our hotel. The power went out and so we ate by candlelight but it was beautiful because the whole city went dark and we could see very far out and the stars were very visible. After some Wi-Fi use I showered, watched some Indian MTV (which was so addicting to watch because the music videos are so funny and so are the commercials) and went to bed. Three of us shared a queen bed and Amee took the floor mattress.
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