Today we got up for our sunrise boat trip at 4.45am, confirmed the price several times with the guy, its India you ALWAYS have to check so 50R per person for one hour boat trip… sorted off we went.

Its amazing at that time of the morning how many people are up doing yoga, bathing or doing their laundy in the river it was nice way to see the ghat's from the boat and just to people watch all the way along the river . The sunrise was amazing too nice way to wake up.  However it didn’t stop other boats coming up to us trying to sell us postcards, holy water, dvd’s and god knows what else – you just cant get away from people wanting to sell you stuff not even on a boat. 

It then became aparent that the boat trip was not an hour trip it more like 50R per hour !!! He had rowed that far along now that there was no way the trip was gonna be an hour long so we had to tell him to go back or else I think he would have just kept rowing !  They are not stupid he had us – we thought we had the price sorted – we just didn’t confirm how many hours haha

Anway by this point we were all starving, Marc and Martin had a go at trying to row the boat – it was more difficult than it looked so it was back to the guy who slowly got us back to shore - after paying for our now hour n half boat trip the guy had a cheek to ask for tips too!!

Got some food and spent the day on the balcony had a few beers, Martin & Alex were to get their train at 5pm but at 4.15pm as they were leaving they decided IF they could change their ticket they were gonna stay another day and we were gonna party that night – so off they went with their bags to get the train – cutting it very fine for time!  About an hour later much to our surprise they arrvied back ticket changed all sorted – delighted – get the beers in !!!  Travelling India we have not met too many westeners they had said the same, so it was great for us all to get pissed and have some good proper banter as its not exactly party central in India .

Marc and Martin went off to hunt for an alcohol shop up the many lanes as beers were getting boring – 50 mins later (that’s good going for finding any shop up those lanes in Varanasi) they return with whiskey and vodka woo hoo.

So not only were we fully stocked with booze and good company it turns out it’s a Lunar eclipse tonight so half of India has turned up at the Ganges to mark this event, literally thousands of people & TV crews – aparently they are all meant to run in at some point so from the balcony we had a great view of all these people gathering.  So from midnight we watched the earth cover the moon it was a perfect view clear skies was well cool.

The people on the ganges stayed still we figured maybe its when it uncovers so still drinking anyway we waited another 100 mins then the moon came back out again perfect views again it was amazing looked well weird – anyway now 3.30am the moon is fully uncovered and noone was running into the ganges no drama no noise no singing, chanting or bells nothing they were silent !!  The words silence and India don’t figure in one sentence, its noisey here all the time but one by one they were all taking their turn to get in to bathe and pray. Some wee guy had set up this giant cardboard box so the women could change in to bathe and he was making money from that – they are resourceful I will give you that.

Anyway after all that we crawled to bed – quality day had by all.