23 Feb. 2010
Journey to Varanasi
Satna, confused rickshaw drivers and a very slowly train
Early in the morning we took a taxi to Satna, the nearest town with a train station and a train connection to Varanasi. The hotel advised us to leave at 7:00 a.m., despite the fact that the train was to leave at about noon. We were told that there are traffic jams on the roads and therefore it can take long time to reach Satna. But contrary to those warnings, we were in Satna well before the time and did not know what to do. There is nothing interesting to do at train stations. Hence we left our luggage at a luggage office and we went looking for some restaurant to get something to eat and kill time.
A rickshaw took us on the main road in the town, to the restaurant, which does not seemed to be fit to sit there, let alone to eat a meal. So we set off for the exploration on our own. We searched for a restaurant in vain, because in India you need to know exactly where you want to go to get there. In the end, however, some bicycle-rickshaw took us to a good restaurant where we ate the best vegetarian tali in India. Tali is a set of small dishes served in small bowls, this is usually one or two vegetarian curry, dal, rice and roti.
After eating our rickshaw driver, who waited for us in front of the restaurant, took us to the station. Since this was a bicycle rickshaw, it shook terribly on the road, and the rickshaw driver sweated quite a bit, especially as he had to drive uphill.
On reaching the station, it turned out that our train is quite late. So we waited on the platform an hour, then two, and longer... watching other travelers ....
The train was even nice. We met a British family who was on a very similar trip as us, but preferred to go to national parks than watch the monuments. The train was going terribly slow and actually it stood longer than was moving.
We arrived to Varanasi at around 2 a.m. (we were scheduled to be there at 20:00 p.m. the previous day). Taxi drivers arranged by our hotel, were waiting for us at the stations and took us quickly to a place in the city, from which we had to go on foot because there is no possibility for rickshaws to enter further. The old streets are so narrow. Fortunately the taxi driver took my suitcase because I had no more strength left, but my mom had to drag her suitcase herself, and we navigated the winding streets, carefully avoiding piles of garbage and of cow pots... This is the reason for Indian women to wear dupattas: to protect their noses. Over the next few days we used this trick too.
Hotel Sita's Guest House, which we booked beforehand, proved to be on the very ghats. Of course, there was no elevator, but it was a worry for the hotel boys not for us (our suitcases were very heavy). A sleepy manager (I do not think that he was the owner) showed us a room, which proved to be quite different than the one we had ordered. He assured us, however, that on the second day we will get a better room. We did not get the promised towels and the sheets looked like old window curtains. The room was full of mosquitoes, so our mosquito-machine had "hands full" of work. Fortunately, the machine managed its task very well, and soon there was not even a one small mosquito in the room. However, this did not improve my mood. Tired and disappointed in the end, I went to sleep.