Gaya to Varanasi

So as I was the only one awake during this whole trip I'm obligated to be the one writing about it. Jim being the more responsible studious blogger has already written all about our time and Varanasi and our trip back to Delhi and has only been waiting for me to post our little journey before he puts up the other post, so here goes. Our trip to the train station was basically without incidence, in true Bihar fashion we wound through numerous dirt roads seemingly headed to the middle of nowhere only to suddenly emerge at the train station which was festively decorated with palm trees made of xmas lights. We made our way to the train station to learn that our train was right on time, but we still had an hour to wait so we hunkered down on the nearest concrete bench. While waiting we talked to a retired merchant marine who's train was running at least 5 hours behind schedule and probably more since no one seemed to know where his train was. After saying goodbye to the mariner we boarded our timely train and quickly went to sleep since our train was arriving at 2:30am and we wanted to get as much sleep as possible. Despite past indicators of just about every train running late our train got in exactly on time which meant we had a 4.5 hour wait in the train station before our guesthouse opened. We had hopped to secure a retiring room (small rooms with beds in train stations) for this time, but they were all full so we once again pulled up a nice piece of concrete and hunkered down for the long haul. I quickly realized I wasn't going to be going to sleep so Jim tried and was quickly sound asleep. I tried reading but I didn' t have quite enough sleep to concentrate on the words so I took to playing solitaire (which drew a few watchers). This was going well till Jim got splashed with some water. We both thought it was someone emptying their water bottle from above until I too got splashed and we realized that it was workers cleaning the stairs above us. So we moved to a new spot and I continued playing solitaire. This whole time people would come up to me and try to get me to go to their hotel or take me somewhere in their taxi. So I took to ignoring these people. After awhile there was one who came up as per custom I ignored him (I had headphones in so I couldn't hear him), when he walked away I noticed he was a station worker and I wondered what he wanted. A few minutes later I saw him a short distance down the platform with a hose, I quickly woke Jim and we made a hasty retreat from the on coming water. Our new home was short lived as the man with the hose came to where we had retreated to, so we moved into the crowed station hall. We now had about an hour and a half left so I continued playing solitaire. After a short time someone came up to me and grabbed all my cards, I grabbed them back and put them safely in my pocked. The card thief proceeded to squat down in front of me and lecture me in Hindi. I kept saying I didn't understand but he kept talking, drawing more onlookers as he went. Eventually a station worker came over and shooed him away for which I was grateful. After all of this it seemed like 7am would never come but it finally did and we called our hotel only to find out it would be another half hour before they sent a rickshaw to fetch us. We decided to get a taxi and finally got to the guesthouse at around 7:30.

Adam McCurdy
1/3/2009

Happy New Year