temporarily trapped in Benares...

Well, I relied upon the availability of tickets, and Diwali festivities have taken their toll...

I had hoped to leave Varanasi (Benares) today and head off by train to Calcutta. The train would have put me into town at about 6:30 or 7:00am on Tuesday, but all the tickets (including the last call ones) were taken. So I'm in town for one more day, and I'll fly out of here tomorrow at 4:00pm. The silly thing is that there are no direct flights to Calcutta. The only way to do it is to fly to Delhi, and then out to Calcutta. The worst part of it is that I'm half way between Delhi and Calcutta to begin with, so I'm essentially tripling my travel time (more than that if you factor in layover time... but with Indians scheduling this, God alone knows how when I'll leave and when I'll land.)

I did a tour of the ghats this morning. I had a row boat ride around, and it really was cool watching a slice of Indian holy life slide by. When the heat breaks, I'll go back to the ghats and stroll along them for some more people watching.

dilip