Wednesday 26th December

Wednesday 26^th December

Boxing Day and No. #3 Family Christmas meal.  We very much enjoyed Lunch #1 and Evening Meal #2.  Many happy children, many cheerful smiling adults.  LOTS of food!

Michael was very happy, back in the family fold.  He told us a story about being out on an army exercise a few months ago, in far Northern Queensland.  “We had a HUGE storm,” he said, with a slight shudder.  Katy asked if it lasted all day, or maybe even all night?  “Nope.  Three weeks!”  Three weeks of torrential deluge.  Michael’s tent collapsed under the weight of the water collecting on the fly – he got out just before he would have been deluged, and spent the rest of the three weeks sleeping, quite cosily, in a shipping container.  Three weeks!!!

India #52

After a fairly scungy Varanasi lunch – but how could we complain, it cost us not even $3 for all four of us… - we set out to walk down to the ghats.  It was very hot and we were followed by touts every dusty dirty step of the way.  Mary got very fed up with our most persistent tout (Tout No. #1).  He got a bit ahead of us, so she gestured to us to come down a narrow winding laneway, right off the main drag.  “Let’s escape!” she said, happily, and hopefully.  I knew we couldn’t escape, but was very happy to go down the cooler old street, populated by goats, cows, families, no cars, just speeding motorbikes.  Varanasi is a very big city, with a huge population, but I think tomtoms were beating up and down the streets: “There they are!  There’s Lollypop and her friends!  They ducked down that laneway and should surface oh..ummm...about near that tailor’s nook!”  (Mary had acquired the nickname Lollypop, it followed her all over Varanasi.  We think it was because of her pretty bright pink hat.)

 So when we popped out, expecting to be tout-free, there he was, beaming fondly, and we somehow found ourselves taken over by Tout No. #2 – how did he manoeuvre this?  It is all a blur!  We allowed him to lead us into the narrow streets of the Old City.  I think Mark Twain is quoted, in Lonely Planet, as saying that “Benares is one of the oldest cities in the world, and it looks it.”  I don’t think he wrote this admiringly… I actually loved the old city, with its narrow, twisting streets, and tiny shops.  (I’m not sure when Benares became Varanasi; maybe the same time Bombay became Mumbai…)  The streets were heaving with activity.  People busy making a living, working away on their treadle machines, ironing with huge coal-filled irons – and ironing much more beautifully and exquisitely than I can ever manage with my lovely light electric steam iron!  The only thing wrong with these streets is that they do allow motorbikes to roar up and down them.  They barely fit, and they are a real danger.  I’m not sure how the children, chickens, goats, dogs making their lives on the streets survive!  Pete says, “Well we only see the ones that do survive, don’t we?”