Welcome to Varanasi

After a reasonably comfortable overnight train journey (I got some sleep this time), we arrived at Varanasi station looking forward to relaxing for a day or three. Our schedule had been close to hectic for the past few days, and this was our last stop in India, so we needed a bit of down time before tackling Nepal. As it turned out however our search for a hostel was anything but relaxing.

A seemingly nice Nepalese fellow gave us a good price (50 rupees) for the rickshaw journey. He wasn't the driver as it turned out, he rode in front alongside, but no harm, the price was good. The Nepalese fellow, or gobshite as I'm going to term him henceforth, suggested a hotel he knew well, promising everything we were looking for and inour price range. It sounded good. When we were pulling up outside the entrance, gobshite said that actually it's a bit more expensive, but very nice.

Price is our priority, and we reluctantly called in to the place. Too expensive. Cue John justifiably getting very angry with gobshite, throwing the 50 rupees his way and storming off, with Gearóid and myself in tow. Gobshite proceeded to stalk us, asking why were we walking the wrong way, the hostels were in the other direction apparently. After five minutes, we realised we had no idea where we were. Gobshite was still around. Realising our lack of options, we demanded to be taken to Yogi's. He agreed, at no extra cost. I thought this was nice of him, but John was still suspicous.

We pulled up to the hostel. The sign matched the name on the book, but looked very temporary. We had a look at a room. Not great, the price was too high, and the hostel manager didn't make a good impression. Not to mention gobshite was pushing the hostel the whole time we were there. We'd had enough of him.

Finding a nearby main street, we tried to get our bearings, gobshite still in tow! We asked a shop owner to show where we were on the map. Nowhere near Yogi's! The hostel was a replica! And gobshite even had the cheek to point to the real Yogi's when we asked him to show us where we were on our map. At that point I wanted to turn to gobshite and say things I wouldn't publish here, but he had conveniently vanished.

After a 2km walk with our backpacks in the sun (we weren't chancing another rickshaw), we found the real Yogi's. Close to it was another recommended place, which we had a look at first. It wasn't great. We told the owner that we were going to check out Yogi's around the corner, and he told us that someone died there today. Great, more lies we thought. But around the corner we went to be faced with a group of police officers and some onlookers outside Yogi's. One of the staff had committed suicide there that morning.

After an exhaustive and exhausting couple of hours we finally found a suitable place for a suitable price. We've had better arrivals.