So woke today and were just chilling on the bacony chatting with Julie taking in the view and she says "is that" right at the same time I see what she means “no way” I say jumping up to get Marc from the toilet…..there is dead body of a fully clothed man face up floating in the river towards us. Now this is Varanasi and yeah its what we came to see but they are not supposed to be just floating like that they are supposed to be cremated! So we sat and watched for a few hours as he bobbed slowly but surely right to the bank of the river literally below us – many people walking along below stopped to look then just walked off like it was normal. The people washing themselves and their clothes that came and went all day just looked at him then got on with washing just 2-3 meters away from “bob” as we called him. It was almost as if it was normal and to be expected given that we were in Varanasi its what they do here after all – if that had been on the banks of the Thames it would have been more shocking but somehow it was just ok!

So we went out for the day with Julie had an amazing proper pizza and then she headed off for the train and Marc and I walked back right along all the ghats around sunset time was lovely just people watching and getting through the people wanting to sell us everything !

So we get back to our hotel and before we climb the stairs up from the river a bigger crowd has appeared now and 2 policemen – people were going right down the stairs for a look at him now – we both looked at each other…should we?? Well of course we did again our human curiosity to look . Marc went first and came back up and just looked at me, so I had to look too – he was a bit swollen considering we saw him at 10am this was now nearer 6pm!

Anyway back to to the balcony to continue nosing we met 2 guys just arrived Martin and Alex from Manchester, they had literally arrived here in Varanasi just put their bags in the room then sat down to take in the view and the first thing they seen was bob – some arrival that was. We all got chatting had some beers and several hours later (again still other people washing, bathing, boat trips docking right beside bob with families all stopping to look at him kids n all) we watched some guy on a boat tied a bit of rope to bob's hand and dragged him off out up the river. We later find out from our hotel guy that he was either killed in an argument or suicide it happens all the time, I asked if he will be identified but he said no, the Police don’t want any problems like that. So basically bob was dragged off to some part of the river elsewhere just to be dumped never identified and to be someone else’s problem!