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 that give virtually every Scindhia room these awesome vistas. Click on photos to expand them.
For example, look at the range, down and across the Ganges. These are the views directly outside the door to my room.
The hotel layout offers one long, common balcony on each of the five levels. As you can see other guests also think them an excellent vantage point.
The double-ended rowboats are used in the dawn and dusk rowing tours along the ghats. I’ve scheduled that tour for the morning. Strangely, the hotel books the 5:00am tour, but doesn’t offer a wakeup service. I’ll depend on the help of another guest who has an alarm clock (A German, of course; they and the English are the keeprs of apointments.)
At the moment, 9am on my first morning, I’ve had a hot shower, clean, dry clothes and I’m revived. I’m late for breakfast in the common room. But first, a few more photos of this scene from another world . . .
As I was taking my final shots of this first morning, a lovely young woman from the next room appeared on the shared balcony. She was taking her last look before checking out. She’s Mexican, obviously from a privileged family, on a six-month tour of the world. We chatted in Spanish.
Once again, I silently thanked my patient and persistent high-school Latin teachers who told me that someday I would be glad I had studied the key to most European languages. Decades later I found Spanish needed only just a slight adjustment in vocabulary.
