Varanasi

I don't get it. Why are people crazy about Varanasi? Why do they all come here and why do they end up strongly recommending it to everybody else? "You MUST go to Varanasi!", "No travelling around India is complete without a visit to Varanasi", and "I was travelling around India for 3 months and out of all places I visited, Varanasi is definitely my favourite".

I don't get it. I dislike Varanasi. A lot.

Yes, it's filthy, the riskshaw drivers are always all over us constantly following us, and all men very indiscreetly take photos of me everywhere I go. But they do that everywhere else too, so that's not it.

There is something very disturbing about Varanasi. I'm not sure what it is, I can't really put my finger on it. Is it the numbing smell that's a hundred times worse than anywhere else? Is it the devilishly narrow and empty alleys that send chills down your spine even when the heat is so intense that your clothes have formed an external layer of skin because you're sweating so much that 50% of all the water inside your body is actually now not on inside but on the outside of your skin? Is it the fact that all drivers insists on having their "brother" or "study-buddy" with them in the rickshaw and you spend 15 minutes saying you only want to go with the driver? Is it how half of the cycle-rickshaw drivers are kids below the age of 11? Or how all vendors on the street, regardless of what trash they are selling, want to sell you drugs? Or fools who with all seriousness want to convince you to take an hour long ride on an old, rusty boat, out on the Ganges river with a thunderstorm just seconds away? Or all potheads who claim they are pure and spiritual because they are vegetarians dressed in hippie clothes in India, and yet sit around (high as scyscrapers, I should add) and smoke cigarettes in restaurants?

And in addition to all this, there's nothing really to see here. A River. I've seen it now, thank you. So it leaves me here wondering why everyone likes Varanasi. If you ask me, there really isn't much to like here. And so, all I can do now is to read lousy books and wait until our train back to Delhi leaves tomorrow night.