Travel as Life: Northern India Journey - Day 20 Varanasi

The morning in Varanasi was a bit cold. A boat owner waited inside the hostel looking for some customer. I followed him to his boat for a morning trip for the Ganges River. The time I went there was already late. I didn't see the sun rise. But the sky was very misty. I thought I couldn't see it even I was on time. Before it started, 2 little girls selling flower candle came and sold. The way they sold the candle was annoying but yet funny. They spoke very quickly and demanded a really high price. they also insisted me to buy as much as possible for family and friends. That's a bit weird to bargain with kids.

Birds on the river. When the boat driver yelled, the birds would fly to the boat.

The Indian people doing puja.

In the mid of the trip, the driver took me to a burning ghat where Indian people burn the corpses. There was another guide took me to visit there. He explained everything about the history and culture there. When we went up to a building. he showed me an poor old lady without family. He said she was living there and waiting for her "last day". You guess what? The guide asked me to give some donation as she needed money to buy the wood for her funeral. That's a bit embarrassing here. It seemed rude to not give but I wasn't sure the money was actually helping her.

The woods for burning. That was the only thing the guide invited me to take picture of.

The tourist playing music with local.

After lunch, I went to Ramnagar Fort. The fort was on the other side of the river. You had to walked through a pantoon. The pantoon was quite scary which was using some big empty tanks to support the wooden bridge. Auto-rickshaws, cars, motorbikes, bicycles and pedestrians were using the pantoon at the same time. Sometime the pantoon wasn't stable when a big vehical passed though.The fort wasn't very impressive as a whole. When I visited the museum inside, the electricity went off suddenly.