We are proud to say that we have survived our first Indian overnight train! After arriving at the station 2 hours early, much to our delight, we found out we had been upgraded from second to first class 
This meant we only shared our cabin with 2 others, not a million. The lady and man we shared with were very nice and even invited us to their house in Delhi, however, we have our suspicions that the lady may have actually been a man.... who slept in a sari (v. impressive actually). The train rolled in to Varanasi at 9am the next morning, 1 1/2 hours late 
. We were picked up by a taxi and taken to the hotel. Unfortunately we fell in to the trap of the taxi driver as he organised our itinerary without asking us. Last night he took us to the Ghats (steps all the way along the bank of the Ganges) for a sunset boat ride. We rowed up and down looking at all the different Ghats and watching the people swimming, bathing, washing clothes, praying and setting up funeral pyres. It was very lively and loud with lots to see. After sunset, we watched the Puja (prayers) and were lucky because last night was a special celebration with dancing, music and lots of people. We watched it all from our boat and then released some candles into the river.
The taxi driver had arranged to pick us up at 5am (yes, that's right) this morning to go on a sunrise boatride. We waited and waited for him to come but he didn't turn up so we had to take a cycle rickshaw to the Ghats and ended up missing the beginning of the sunrise. Luckily the sun was hiding behind a cloud so we got our own mini sunrise when it came out from behind the cloud. The ghats were just as lively as last night even though it was so early in the morning. There were yoga lessons on the banks and kids' swimming lessons but we decided against going in the water as it's a strange green-brown colour! Then we went back to bed, but were woken up when the taxi driver rang our hotel room to say there had been a problem with his autorickshaw, even though his friend had told us he'd slept in. He insisted we be ready in 5 minutes to go to a temple but we told him we were too tired as it was 6am! After breakfast we went to visit a well but on the way were hounded by annoying men following us and trying to get us to visit their shops/restaurants. After battling through them all and reassuring them that actually we could live without visiting their 'government run shawl factories' we managed to reach the Vishwanath Temple. Jo wasn't allowed inside the Temple as she's not Hindu and had to wait in a shop whilst Pragya got lost inside the Temple grounds. We decided to visit a cafe recommended in the guide book but it took about 30 mins to find it in the maze of back alleys that run along the ghats. Unfortunately, it wasn't as described in the guide book as service was very slow and there were mice running around at our feet ! The slow service meant that we didn't have time to visit the Fort before it closed which is a shame as we've now run out of sights to see in Varanasi! To top it all off, when we got back to the hotel the taxi driver announced that we owed him 400 rupees (approx 5 pounds - an awful lot for India) for driving us to the ghats last night, forgetting about us this morning and then waiting for us to ring him to take around Varanasi all today. We explained that we had in fact not arranged to go anywhere with him and could he please leave us alone.
We took another recommendation from the guide book for a place to have dinner. After walking round the alleyways in the dark for 1 hour we found that the restaurant had 'closed for summer' so we looked for another guide book recomendation. However, once we found it we discovered this was also 'closed for the summer'. So we ended up having our dinner in a German bakery which served Chinese food and played country n western music!
Cya!