Namaste. Last time I wrote, I was on my way to Varanasi - my favourite city in India. Two years ago, I stayed there for 1 month. This time, I did not have so much time. In this enchanting, but also very dirty town (the evidence that not only humans suffer from diarrhoea is frequently lying on the streets), it's good to stroll through the narrow alleys and streets and over the ghats.
Many big bulls are found in the crowded streets, blocking the traffic by just sitting or standing around.

I saw 2 Hindu wannabes in my guesthouse. A guy from Utah, who looked like a white-washed sadhu, and a Japanese girl, complete with 3 white stripes (some Hindu thing) on her forehead and whom I even saw bathing in the heavily polluted Ganges (shit, burned and unburned human remains and everything else you can think about that is not good for your health).
I wonder what goes on in their minds, I really do, but I cannot understand it. They are the real freaks of India if you ask me, not the deformed beggars like the woman I saw in Mangalore, who was the size and shape of a basketball or other victims of inbreed or polio.

After the rafting I went back to India, which was like stepping into a oven. The temperature had risen since I had left. I had to buy a train ticket; the hall was filled with long queues of impatient and restless people (including me). Sometimes people would skip the queue and go straight to the counter. This to the disapproval of many. You could feel the tension in the air and wondered when the Great railway ticket riots would start. Fortunately this didn't happen.

I spent some days in Varanasi (drinking bhang lassi), being struck by the overwhelming heat, and doing basically nothing. Sometimes there was a wind blowing but instead of cooling you down, it heated you up. It almost made me want to jump into the Ganges, but common sense stopped me from doing that.