varanasi

Happy Belated Valentine's day from Varanasi, the city of cows and monkeys. Seriously, this place is overrun by cows and monkeys - they're everywhere. I can't walk down the street without stepping in cow poop.

This would be a super interesting place, except I've been nothing short of totally miserable since we got here. I was fine in Calcutta, and I was fine the whole train ride here, but as soon as we got here, I don't know what happened - I am sooo sick. Not throwing up or anything, just a combination of fever/aches/insomnia and major food aversion. My stomach just feels like it's churning, I can't even look at food. As a consequence of no sleep and no food, I have no energy. Micah's pretty much done Varanasi on his own.

Yesterday morning we got up at 5:30am to do the sunrise boat ride on the Ganges... it was a pretty cool experience. Later in the morning, we visited a bunch of Hindu temples, most interesting being the Hanuman (monkey) Temple, which had about a zillion monkeys running around, eating bugs and poo and being creepy, standard monkey behavior. After that I couldn't handle anymore and went to lie down for the rest of the day in my crappy 5$ hotel room which was everything you can imagine a 5$ hotel would be like. This morning I went out again, but only lasted an hour before going back to lie down. I feel like death. On a positive note, according to the Hindus, if I die in Varanasi supposedly that means I am released from the cycle of reincarnation. Or maybe that only works if you're Hindu. On the death topic (sorry to be morbid) there are two places by the river here where they cremate bodies before putting the ashes in the river. Which means you can actually walk down and watch these cremations in progress, which we did. Again, interesting experience, but I couldn't watch for very long because my stomach was still churning and watching a cremation was not making that any better. It's kind of hard to watch, really.

On a better note, I did get a very pretty silk sari, the cheaper variety but it's not like I can tell the difference. The guy at the silk shop showed me how to wear one though, so finally I know how to tie them. At some point I will post a photo of me in a sari looking like Aishwarya Rai (or rather, what Aishwarya Rai would look like if she were ghostly pale and deathly ill).

Overnight train to Agra tonight, Taj Mahal tomorrow. I may or may not survive. I am going to be happy when we get off the tourist loop and get into the city... Varanasi is a cool place but it's very much like Niagara Falls, or Venice... so touristy it's like they're not real cities. I expect Agra will be the same. Looking forward to Delhi. And not being sick. Unghhhh.