Ken had breakfast on the roof. Even foggier today than yesterday. Over breakfast he read in the paper that flights had been cancelled yesterday because of the dense fog, so a little worried about today's flight.

Went down and got the laundry. The hotel had over-charged us so that took some sorting out. (And even after the mistakes were fixed it was still very expensive at $27. In India you could just about buy new clothes for that much!)

Went for a walk to have a look at the hotel that Heather had booked for when we get back from Varanasi. It was a long walk through the usual craziness of the bazar. At the hotel we asked an Australian lady that was sitting in the lobby how she liked it there. She didn't like it one bit! And she went on to tell us her horror stories for the next 20 minutes or so. It sounded worse than the place we've been staying in now.
 
Walked back to the hotel and checked out. Carried our bags on our backs down the length of Main Bazar road to the Delhi train station and the over the pedestrian bridge and across the road to the nearby metro station. Got lots of attention from the touts on the way but knew enough to ignore them by now.

Took the metro to airport. The airport train is very nice with good seats and not many people. And it only costs about a dollar, so it's a great deal.

At the airport we found out that our flight had been delayed from 2 to 3pm. With time to kill we went to McDonald's for lunch. Ken had an extremely hot Chicken Maharajah McMac (like a Big Mac but with chicken instead of beef and a very hot 'special sauce') and Heather had a Mc Spicy Paneer (which is like a hamburger except instead of a beef patty there is a slab of battered and deep fried cheese). It cost $16.66 for the two of us!
 
The flight itself was uneventful. The fog had dissipated leaving just the usual smog to blot out any view of Delhi from the plane.

At the airport in Varanasi there was a man waiting for us with a car, which the hotel had arranged at our request. We had to wait 15 minutes before leaving for a third passenger to show up.

By the time we left the airport it was dark and we had another scary ride. It is 25 km from the airport into town and it took us over an hour due to bad traffic and construction. At one point we actually drove underneath a humongous section of concrete road-bed that was being lifted into place on an elevated roadway by a big crane!

Then...surprise...on a very busy street, far from our hotel, the car stops and the driver gets out and starts unloading our luggage. When we asked what was going on he pointed to a guy that was standing there and said "hotel man, he take you."

The hotel man picked up one of the bags and started walking up the street into the oncoming traffic. Ken grabbed the other bag and we followed, thinking he must be leading us to his car parked nearby. But the man kept walking and walking and we kept following for a long long way, trying our best to keep up. At first we were on very busy roads with lots of traffic swerving all around us. The man just lifted the backpack over his head and waded into the river of motorbikes and auto-rickshaws. And we followed - what else could we do? After a while we turned down a smaller side street with less traffic. And then down narrower and narrower streets that turned into alleyways and then into passages. And eventually after carrying our bags in our arms for about 1 km we arrived at our hotel, the Baba Guest House.

At the guest house they showed us several rooms and we picked one that has a window where you can get a glimpse of the floodlit Ganges between the neighboring buildings - the murky water merging seemlessly into the murky air so that you can't tell which is which.
 

It was a freaky start, but now that we're here it seems like a not-bad place. After checking in we went for a very short walk to buy some water. We also followed one of the nameless passages near our hotel and came out on a terrace that overlooks the ghats and river below, lit up by flood lights. 
 
After eating at the airport and then again on the plane we weren't hungry, so we skipped supper and just rested in the room until bedtime.