Lassi in Varanasi

To justify the title of the blog, HKC had one rather delicious mango lassi Friday lunchtime and that was about it for lassis in Varanasi. We had a lovely lunch in a rooftop restaurant (recommended in Lonely Planet as a spenny choice, $$$, but, in reality, a steal at £4). RickinIt admired a plethora of flying kites and patted themselves on the back for having read 'The Kite Runner' - very cultured. 

After lunch, we took a stroll along the ganges, admiring the Ghats of Varanasi. In the Hindu faith, Varanasi is believed to be a spiritual place to die since expiring here offers moksha (freedom from the cycle of life and death). A wonderful man explained the various steps of cremation which uses holy fire, otherwise known as the eternal flame (cue high pitched renditions of atomic kitten) to burn the bodies alongside the ghats before putting their ashes into the Ganges. There are 6 exceptions to those who are cremated before being laid to rest in the water, including babies and lepers, whose bodies are placed straight into the river without being burnt. While most of the RickinIt team were intent on asking relevant questions surrounding the ceremony and holy rituals, Gee was more interested in asking why all of the goats were wearing wooly jumpers (and even one in what looked like sub fusc). After this bout of intelligence, we thought it best to leave the cremations and found ourselves in a silk emporium with hundreds of pashminas thrown our way - of course, we felt unable to refuse when the charming salesman started reciting classic Delboy and Rodney catchphrases. Entertaining to say the least. 

In the evening we wound our way back down to the river to watch a gangna aarti- a hugely spiritual hindu ritual which, as far as we could understand, involved priests twirling gradually larger and larger burning objects around, whilst continually dinging bells. Paul was left somewhat disappointed by the grand finale of what looked like feather dusters being waved energetically, having hoped for a fantastic, fiery end to the ceremony. After an hour of this, we attempted to fight our way home through Varanasi rush hour, though we seemed to have a slight failure in our sense of direction and got quite lost. Rickshaw to the rescue (this will hopefully become a theme throughout the trip) and we made it back to our hostel. 

Saturday morning began with a 4.45am wake-up call before what could have been a beautiful sunrise boat ride along the Ganges. Sadly, intense fog prevented any sort of sunrise and I'm not sure that the swarms of bathing men in (almost see through) white y-fronts could constitute beautiful. After a good nap (on the boat for HKC, and once back at Stops hostel for the rest of the team) we hunkered down for another few rounds of yanniv. The game ended in tears on PB's behalf when Gee whipped out a pair of aces and did an extremely tasteful victory lap. The

relationships within the group were swiftly rekindled when we took a cooking lesson and lived out Fi's lifelong dream of getting to cook Chapatis. Everyone knows the best part about cooking is eating and we tucked into a delightful feast of Indian cuisine (mmmmmm), HKC and Gee making sure to dodge any stray chillies.

On a smellier note, due to hot water shortages (read as: none) and very cold weather, between the four of us there have been only 2 showers in 2015, and one team member (mentioning no names) has only one pair of dirty underwear in their laundry bag so far. We'll leave the maths to our lovely readers to figure out how far short of social norms we are currently falling in the hygiene stakes. Here's hoping that we all get a good wash in Agra, our next destination...

The making of a chapati