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The free ride in a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw from the Varanasi train station to the Scindhia Hotel was far and away the wildest I’ve ever had in my 73 years of traveling the world. It was a real live version of the roller coaster that many know as “The Mouse.”
The driver was the most aggressive I’ve ever seen, passing on the outside of curves at full speed against oncoming cars, trucks and rickshaws. At some places along the way, the opposing streams of traffic were divided by a low, narrow wall of concrete – which we ignored. At some intersections we crossed over and went against the oncoming stream – and then at the next, if traffic was lighter on “our side,” we went back where we belonged. Continue reading The Maze
Over the course of my days in Varanasi I learned there are other places to stay along the river. Some of them will appear high up and in the background of photos taken during the Dawn on the Ganges below. But, as the photos here and in other posts demonstrate, none have the broad, open-air balconies [...]
The wide balconies of the Scindhia are the very definition of what American southerners call “a catbird seat,” the perfect spot where one sits just high enough to be un-noticed from below and just enough to the side that you can see faces, not merely the tops of heads. Life on the path and plaza and [...]
 click on photos It’s 5 am. The Ganges River tour along the waterfront of Varanasi starts from the bathing ghat directly in front of the guest house, just as the sky to the east begins to lighten sufficiently to reveal the steps down to the water’s edge. The air is calm. This morning, there is a layer of clouds just high enough to be picking up a diffuse pink glow.
Continue reading Dawn on The Ganges
Last night at twilight, as I was standing on the balcony of my hotel room, high above the broad sweep of the Ganges River, temple bells were tolling and puffs of the late freshening breeze carried small gusts of distant chanting. (Now tell me, honestly, could there ever be a more promising start to a story than that?) Continue reading Twilight Above the Ganges
No text . . . just an album of what I saw this morning from 6 am until around 8:30am. Click on any photo to enlarge.
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I am not one for souveniers. They just add to the baggage. Back in high school, studying Ceaser’s Gallic Wars, I learned that the Roman military word for baggage is “impedimenta”; just something that gets in the way. Continue reading Souveniers
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