This will be my first significant solo trip for nearly 40 years!

Varanasi to Delhi. My last Indian train

Monday 7 February

It was a bizarre trip. Normally at sunrise the ghats are full of people praying, bathing and washing their clothes. This was the sight we had come to see. Instead, they were virtually deserted, with only a small number of intrepid bathers and scarcely any other boats of sightseers. We were rowed right along the line of ghats, with our boatman pointing out various palaces – all now deserted – which had been built over the past two centuries by various important maharajas such as those of Varanasi itself, Jodhpur and Jaipur. Finally, the smoke from damp smouldering fires told us we were approaching the burning ghat. I stayed on the boat (rather chilly!) while the others did the tour I had done the previous day – again with a non-guide guide. As we left, we saw perhaps the first funeral procession of the day arriving. There are apparently two to three hundred burnings a day here, and some more at another of the ghats. Their guide told them that during a heatwave a few years ago, when many of the old died, there was a queue waiting for a place on the steps of this ghat!

The sinister atmosphere was made more so by the unusual absence of people and the storm clouds, which were approaching in a menacing way as we were rowed back to Assi Ghat, at the far end of the town. The boatman rowed hard, but we did not get back in time, and we arrived soaked at the hotel.

My plans to spend a quiet morning catching up with this diary were put paid to by the weather. The torrential rain continued all day long, with spasmodic dramatic thunder and lightening. We only had electricity because of the hotel’s generator, the rest of the town was in virtual darkness. And at lunch time the rain suddenly turned into huge hailstones! Great excitement from the younger hotel staff who had never seen hail.

All in all a most surreal day, spent sitting round a large table with two women, one Australian and the other American, drinking chai and munching pakoras, and taking photos of the two young waiters, who enjoyed looking at their pictures in our digital cameras.

Finally it was time to get a rickshaw to the station. I went an hour earlier than I needed as the American woman was freaking out at the prospect of coping with her first rail trip, having arrived by plane, and she was due to get the Agra train before my one to Delhi.

Outside the hotel, our alley way and the street below had turned into rivers. There was no way to reach the rickshaw other than wading ankle deep through the water, and the rickshaw drove slowly and carefully (thank goodness!), as often the water threatened to trickle up over our feet.

My American friend was indeed traumatized by her first view of an Indian station hall: a mass of humanity standing and squatting, through which you had to push to get to the other side. Luckily I had read my guide books and knew that the tourist office here was one of the best and most helpful in India. We opened its door and there indeed was calm, warmth, a queue of mostly young European or Japanese tourists, and one official calmly and cheerfully giving advice to each in turn. He was the first person I have come across who did not stare at my Indrail pass as if it was a suspicious object; all I needed from him was the train number – the key bit of information for finding out which platform the train departed from.

Like the others, I then used this information office as an informal waiting room and sanctuary until it was time to look for my train, listening all the time to the incessant heavy rain and the intermittent bursts of thunder and lightening – which from time to time plunged the whole station into darkness. Then it was time to make my way onto the platform. What a nightmare. By now the huge hall had turned into its nightly dormitory for the homeless of Varanasi: it was a sea of huddled figures on blankets. Just as I was about to clamber over this, there was a big clap of thunder and once again we were in darkness. So I made the trip by torchlight. The platform was even worse, with cascades of water dropping from the leaky roof and turning the platform into a muddy lake. Horrors: my compartment (AC2) was at the far end of the – very long – train, by which time there was no longer a station roof, leaky or not. So by the time I reached my seat I was well and truly soaked for the second time, with no means of changing and no more dry jeans. (Luckily I had one pair of dry socks, which I saved for the night).

My travel companions turned out to be a rather odd Swede, a businessman of about 50 and an absolutely delightful 85-year-old doctor (a specialist in preventative medicine) and his wife. The doctor had been head of health services in Guyana for many years and had obviously travelled extensively.

We talked about this and that, the old man gave us a lecture about healthy eating, and showed us how important it was to slow down with meditation and contemplative breathing. I was amused to see that a younger businessman, who had joined us by this stage, suddenly stopped slumping, and sat upright, imitating theposture of the old man.

We talked about India’s problems and agreed that one of the main ones was overpopulation. The businessman suddenly launched into a diatribe about how the population increase was thanks to the Moslems breeding more than the Hindus. Oh oh. I didn’t need to say anything, because the doctor said firmly nonsense, this was not borne out by the statistics, and anyhow, the main cause of overpopulation was nothing to do with religion, it was do with poverty and ignorance. So the way forward must be education.

Eventually it was time to turn our seats into bunks. There were not enugh bottom bunks for the doctor, his 75-year-old wife, the businessman (who said he had a bad back) and me. I offered to go in an upper bunk, but the business man, who had firmly taken possession of his bottom bunk, said no: the railway company was obliged to give all senior citizens (60 for women, 65 for men) a lower bunk, and he went off to tell the attendant this. It took nearly an hour before finally the old man was allotted a berth and we could all go to sleep. I am convinced that Indians sleep more soundly; every time I take a train trip I am surrounded by snoring, inert bodies, while I turn and turn, waiting hopefully for signs of dawn, I was not helped on this occasion by clear signs that I was developing a cold, plus at 5 a passing passenger decided to throw up in the passageway just beside our berths…

Finally I said goodbye to my fellow passengers and waited for them to do their habitual rush for the exit, before I gritted my teeth and took the leisurely journey over the bridge (yes, once again we were not on platform one) to the facing sea of rickshawmen.