32hours seems a long time to spend confined to a hard sleeper with 5 engineers, but for some reason it went surprisingly quickly. Despite the fact that over the entire trip I only moved about 100m (and that was only to get some water at a station) there was always something going on, meals being served or ordered, fascinated conversations about Ohms law and the properties of Aluminium and lessons in Hindi. I had the lower berth and on the top was an English electrical engineer, Steve,while on the other side of the compartment was another electrical engineer and his friend the metallurgical engineer and throughout the trip their friend the civil engineer, technical engineer and mechanical engineer joined in on all the fun.
At around 5am on the 13 we arrived in Varanasi Junction Train Station and I was greeted on the platform by a very tired man who held out a scrap of paper with "Bob BABIDOV" scribbled on it and "The Alka Hotel" beneath. It wasn't the smartly dressed hotel employee holding a large cardboard sign with MY name but at 5am it was good enough.
After a chilly rickshaw ride though the main streets of Varanasi before being left at the barriers that stop vehicles other than bike from entering the maze of ridiculously, impossibly, frustrating streets that are the old city of Varanasi.
Steve and I had arranged to meet for breakfast later that morning and together with another tourist we met onboard the train, Anja from St Petersburg, we enjoyed our first continental meal in 2 days, poached eggs on brown toast with hash browns and coffee.
Finally feeling satisfied we headed away from the main roads and head first into the labyrinth towards the mighty Ganges River.
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2 comments:
You mean you stole Bob's room?
Shame on you.
Wow what an amazing trip, must have met a lot of interesting ppl. Great when you travel again as you have free accommodation in different countries. :-)
Can't wait to read the next section of the trip.
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