After our New Delhi adventures, we were off to Dharamsala, into the foothills of the Himalayas for our 10-day Buddhism class and some quality time with the Dalai Lama.  We took an overnight train to a town in northern Punjab called Pathankot.  We had to jump off the train around 7 am on Amy's birthday, then went over to the pre-paid taxi stand to haggle for a ride to the bus station.  Well, the taxis weren’t interested in taking us the 2 or 3 km to the bus station.  They spent about 10 minutes trying to convince us that no buses goes up to Dharamsala.  By now, we knew better.  We finally were able to catch an autorickshaw to the bus station and found a bus that did go to Dharamsala (surprise, surprise!), but by spending so much time arguing with the taxi guys, we missed the first one.  So we waited around a few more hours and caught the next bus.   We went up and up and up into the foothills of the Himalayas, then had to change buses again to get up to our actual final destination of McLeod Ganj, which is a little higher up in the mountains from Dharamsala.  It was already an eventful birthday!

Almost immediately upon arriving in McLeod Ganj, we could tell that this town was a little different.  There were still cows in the streets, so we could tell we were in India, but everyone seemed so much more relaxed.  Other than the very rare beggar and the subdued street vendor, nobody was yelling at us for our money.  And the locals
looked a little bit different – almost Chinese, but not quite.  But the thing that got us super excited were all the monks roaming around! We saw dozens of Tibetan Buddhist monks in their yellow and red robes, shopping at the grocery stores, eating dinner at restaurants, using computers at internet cafes, and walking down the street talking on their cell phones.  We were just amazed by the normal things these monks were doing, and Rob wanted to run up and hug all of them.

McLeod Ganj is the suburb of Dharamsala (about 20 km or so out of town) where the Dalai Lama has made his home in exile.  As the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people (nearly all of whom were Buddhist before the Chinese “cultural revolution” in Tibet), he has been granted asylum by India.  His followers have been allowed
to build quite a nice temple for him there, which is where he gives teachings when he is in town.  We had a day and a half to wander around town before heading up to our Intro to Buddhism class, so we checked out the main temple, wandered down the main streets, and went out of town a little ways, where we saw some breathtaking views of the lower Himalayas.

The inhabitants of McLeod Ganj have figured out how to cater to the foreigner crowd that rolls into town.  In some of the restaurants we visited, there were signs all over the bulletin board for drop-in classes on Reiki, Tai Chi, Buddhism, guitar, drums, didjeridoo, jewelry-making, yoga, and Tibetan cooking.  The hotel we were staying
at, “The Green Hotel,” was big on providing filtered water out of a big 5-gallon jug instead of selling 1-liter bottles to save the planet from plastic, and they provided only vegetarian food at their restauarant.  Not that we disagreed with any of these things, but compared to the rest of India, we had clearly arrived in Hippie-ville.
 Aside from the very old and very young inhabitants who wore traditional Tibetan clothing, most of the locals wore Western clothing, while most of the Western visitors wore handmade Tibetan or Indian clothing.  It made us feel a little out of place, because we weren’t quite prepared for this fashion challenge.  We knew that the Buddhism class would be a little strict on eating and entertainment options, so Rob ate some chicken, drank a beer, and smoked a cigarette on our last day of freedom.  Amy turned on an American movie playing on Indian TV in the hotel room, and we dozed off thinking how unfortunate it is that most Indians get their Western education and
learn to speak English by watching crap like Twilight.  No wonder so many people on that side of the world think our values are completely screwed up.

So I think we've all heard about the caste system in India, but many of us, ourselves included, didn't really know what that meant.  The caste system is a hierarchy established a long time ago.  There are four castes: Brahmins (priests, scholars, teachers, etc.), Kshatriyas (noblemen, warriors, and government officials), Vaishyas (farmers, merchants, and bankers), and Shudras (laborers and craftsmen).  There is also a group of people called the "untouchables," who are essentially excluded from the social hierarchy altogether, and they include people who dispose of dead bodies and other grim tasks.  Janis mentioned one job of an untouchable as the one where people come to your house to clean out your septic tank.  By hand.  They get drunk on whiskey first, and then jump right in and get to work flinging poo out of the septic tank.  I guess somebody's gotta do it.  Anyways, people were labeled into a caste according to their profession - baker, herder, taxi driver, professor, government official, etc.  Once the family was labeled, every child born was born into that occupation, and hence, that caste.  People can take one look at your last name and know what caste you are.  It's still a pretty big deal for people to marry within their same caste, and young people who violate this custom are at risk of being shunned by one or both families.  Although this system was officially voided when India became it's own country, free from the British in 1947, the social caste system still exists.  For many children that are born into lower castes, there is not much hope of escaping the cycle and learning to do another occupation.  For the laborers, there is not much reason for the children to go to school or receive education, because they need to focus on the family business.  Most of these kids drop out of school, if there is one available to them, to go work for the family.  They can't read or write and are destined for the same life as those that have preceded them.

Janis took us to see her friend Sonu’s school that she set up for some of these village children.  Sonu has a Ph.D. in Chemistry, and after she completed her doctoral degree, she decided to turn to charity work and set up a non-governmental organization called “Apni Pathshala Foundation,” dedicated to educating some of India’s poorest children.  We drove over to one of her three schoolhouses, which was donated by the village council and consisted of two small rooms and a porch area.  The smallest kids were all sitting on the porch, practicing their English alphabet and numbers, and we were just blown away by how excited these kids were to be learning.  Older kids were in the classrooms, learning either computer skills or language and math skills. 

There is a large amount of pressure on many of the poorer kids to simply start working to support their families instead of go to school, and the government doesn’t really do much to help these kids.  So Sonu and her staff of volunteers and paid teachers are now educating over 150 students that would otherwise never have gotten a
chance to change their lives.  Everything the students were using, from their backpacks to their pencils and papers, as well as some clothing such as shoes, was obtained through donations.  This was a pretty heavy sight, and we were humbled by the work Sonu was doing.  Here was a lady who could easily get a comfortable government job or work for one of the growing companies in India and go about her life making lots of money, but she chose to work for these kids who had been left behind.  Amazing and truly inspiring. 

If you are interested, the website for her foundation is www.apnipathshala.com.  She has also set up a Paypal account if you would like to make a donation to support her work.  American dollars go a long way in India, where something like $50 can support a full year of school for one kid.  Thank you Sonu, Janis, and all the teachers for the incredible work they do to keep this school going!!

It turns out that Amy has a lot in common with our new friend and host, Janis.  We both clicked with her immediately and felt like we had known her for years.  She is definitely strong-willed and had all these great plans for us, which was wonderful because our brains were shot and recovering from our first several weeks in India.

Janis was adamant about us seeing several things in India, one of which was Wal-Mart.  They changed their name to Easy Day for the Indian market, but the signs and the way the store is set up is exactly the same as an American Wal-Mart store.  It was kinda creepy. The one nice thing is that there is a way better selection of what we would consider to be “ethnic foods,” and they have instant coffee, peanut butter, and Gatorade powder, which would later prove to be critical grocery items that are very hard to find.  So we guiltily picked up some grocery items and made our way out of there, hoping that we weren’t contributing to the destruction of local family
businesses.  But peanut butter cannot be passed up when you're overseas.  You never know when there won't be safe food around, or there may be no food at all, so peanut butter is a life saver.

Janis and her daughter, Sophia, also took us to Chhatarpur Temple.  One day back in the 70’s, this guy started building temples in a suburb of Delhi called Chhatarpur.  For whatever reason, once he finished one, he started another, then another, and another, and now there are over 20 temples together in a complex called Chhatarpur
Mandir, and you can find your favorite Hindu deity in one or several of these temples.  They are massive.  And talk about ornate: one Shiva temple we visited had an entire room covered in silver plate, with incredibly detailed friezes and other designs all over the walls, ceiling, railings, and doors.  Other parts of the temple were entirely
made of carved white marble, and it simply boggles the mind to think about how much time, money, and work went into crafting these temples. We visited one Shiva temple, then we drove past a host of temples
dedicated to Durga, Hanuman, and other major Hindu deities.  It was one of the coolest things we've seen.

The next day we decided to take the HOHO bus (weird name, I know, but is stands for "Hop on, Hop off").  We usually don't do these bus tours, but Delhi is so massive and crazy, that it seemed like the best way to see the sights.  We saw several important monuments, but didn't end up going in too many, due to time constraints and the incredibly pricey foreign tourist entrance fees.  The one place we had to see, was the Baha'i Lotus Temple.  However, on our way there, a sudden rain storm started and completely flooded the streets.  Traffic stopped and the waters raged.  We were thankful to be safe and dry inside the bus.  The water was up to the doors of cars, and getting higher.  Just as we're peering outside, marveling at the massive amount of water, we see this group of young kids - maybe 5-8 years old - turning this street water into a pool.  They started swimming around, dunking their heads, laughing and splashing around.  We were horrified!  The water was so unimaginably dirty.  All the unmentionable and unknown things that coat the streets were now freely floating around, creating a dark brown mini-sea.  Just thinking about it makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.  To each his own, I guess!  So, unfortunately, we didn't make it to the Lotus Temple and spent the rest of the day sitting on the bus.  We planned to catch the Lotus Temple when we returned to Delhi in a few weeks.

We were happy to finally get back to Janis' house, where we could lounge around, hang with Sophia, and eat some mind-blowing Indian dishes.  Rob had a good time hanging with Janis' husband Micky, talking politics over a few glasses of Scotch.  We would have been content to stay much longer!  But we had a date with Buddha that we couldn't pass up, so we got ready to do an overnight train ride up North.  We rearranged our travel gear so as to leave our non-essentials with Janis and free up space in our backpacks for more souvenirs, then we bid our new friends farewell for a few weeks.

After our Varanasi adventure and little mini-introduction to Buddhism in India on our trip to Sarnath, we were eager to head to Dehli and meet our soon-to-be friend, Janis.  We took an overnight train from Varanasi to New Delhi, and then found our way to the Delhi Metro station.  At this point, we knew the drill when you leave any transportation station, so the touts and rickshaw drivers didn't bother us too much.  We must have achieved the "Don't mess with us" look on our faces!

The Delhi Metro system was designed by a Japanese company, which means it is absolutely state of the art: clean, efficient, and just a pleasure to ride.  Except during rush hour.  With a design capacity of something like 1000 people per train, rush hour traffic sees approximately 7000 people per train, so you have to literally push and shove your way onto the train or you simply won’t get on.  Good thing we went to all those metal concerts and worked on our moshing skills back in the day.  So we "moshed" our way onto a train with our giant backpacks on our backs, our regular day-trip backpacks on our chests, and a couple of duffle bags in our hands. For a short while, we were regretting buying all the things that we now had to carry with us. 

Side note: Another interesting thing about the metro is the "ladies only" sections.  We're not sure exactly why these exist, but our guess is that part of the reason is because India has a large Muslim population, so as a respect to their customs, the ladies have their own riding car.  Our other guess is that as much as we'd like to think that men can behave, they still act like dogs sometimes and it's safer for woman, especially unaccompanied ones, to travel separately.  This is probably a good time to mention an interesting cultural difference between India and Western countries.  Some of the Asian countries are so ancient that they seem to have a much slower pace of time than we do in the West.  For example, many families still do everything themselves, rather than rely upon mega grocery stores and corporations to supply the things they need.  They get fresh milk delivered and make their our curd (yogurt) every day.  Many families still make all their own food from scratch.  They are skilled and can build, sew, craft, and fix things.  Along with this exists ancient and unmaintained electrical lines and plumbing systems, which is why you're not allowed to put any tissue paper in some toilets (that is a request to foreigners, since Indians have their own system and don't need toilet paper) and why the power is out for most of the day.  We would drive past some electrical lines and they would be sparking and blowing up.  Rob literally thought someone was welding on the side of the road during one car trip until we got close enough to realize it was just a jumble of power lines making a pretty little plasma arc.  Safety isn't really a concern!  On a social note, it's still somewhat accepted that men don't have control over themselves and women have to be very careful about "inviting" inappropriate attention.  Pretty much, if something happens to a woman, it's because she caused a man to do it - either by the way she looked at him, what she is wearing, where she is at, or simply that she is existing.  We started to understand more why Muslim women cover themselves.  Not only is it a religious thing, but this one lady explained to us that back in the day, women remained inside all day or were kept separated from men to protect themselves.  Then, they started to be able to go out in completely covered carriages.  Now they have the burqa, which allows them the freedom to leave the house and go wherever they need to.  The law doesn't protect women, so they have to protect themselves.  It may seem strange to Westerners, but when you look at the history, it helps you understand a little more where they are coming from.

So, back to the Delhi metro.  When we arrived at the Gurgaon station, we were greeted by Janis and her seven-year old daughter Sophia, who was sporting a handmade sign saying “Welcome Rob and Amy” in classic kid’s handwriting.  It made us grin from ear to ear.  We hopped in the car and met their driver Vaseem, and then made our way to their farmhouse out in the rural edge of town.  Gurgaon itself was a shock to our senses, just when we were beginning to think we couldn't be shocked anymore.  After being engrossed in one of the oldest cities in the world, we now found ourselves in one of the newest cities of the world, where global companies like Microsoft, LG, and Reliance are plopping down skyscraper office buildings amidst American-style malls and world-class condominium towers.  There was new construction of office buildings for miles and miles, all going up at the same time. And once you go a little bit further, there are just shacks and falling-down concrete hovels with fruit carts and cigarette stands mixed in.  There were big chunks of road that were washed out from the monsoon rains, so you couldn’t do more than 40 km per hour (about 25 mph) for any extended period of time
as you dodged potholes and cows.  Old meets new, I guess!

At Janis’ house, we were able to unload our loot and leave it there until we came back from the second half of our trip.  She and her husband Micky were in the import/export business several years ago, and were able to get a decently big house on some property that has now easily tripled in value because of the building boom.  They have a full staff working for them, including a driver, a cook, and a few others that help with various parts of their businesses and housework. We were super excited about their cook, because this guy had been trained as a chef and worked in Goa for several years before coming to Gurgaon to work for Janis.  He made some amazing meals for us, and we spent a day learning to cook a few Indian dishes with him.  Amy mastered the “roti,” which is basically an Indian tortilla that can be eaten with just about every meal.  It turns out that many of the
spices they use overlap with New Mexican cooking (cumin, coriander, garlic, onion, salt, and chile powder), except that they add turmeric, ginger, and sometimes a masala spice blend (cinnamon, nutmeg, anise, cloves, and other Christmas-type flavors), and they use about four times as much spice as any American would think to use.  So it’s actually not that intimidating to cook up some amazing Indian dishes.

Also, by this point in our trip we had noticed that we were mostly eating vegetarian, and Amy was pretty much completely veg.  We hadn’t even missed the meat in our daily meals because the vegetable dishes tasted so amazing.  We were also vaguely scared of getting sick again from eating improperly cooked meat, so that kind of narrowed down our options.  But who knew that peas, carrots, cauliflower, and potatoes could be so satisfying?  Rob had also gone down two more holes in his belt.  In fact, he was on the last hole of his belt and couldn’t bring
it in any tighter.  The pants he had bought for the trip were bunching up around his waist because he had lost so much in the middle! Through a magical combination of very little meat, lots of walking, and the occasional sickness, Rob had lost 15 pounds by the end of our trip.  Amy didn’t have much to start with, so she didn’t really lose any.

Speaking of sicknesses, Rob brought a little present to Janis' house.  On the train to Delhi, he started to notice what looked like mosquito bites on his hands and feet that were really itchy.  We didn't think too much about it and we resolved to be more vigilant in our application of mosquito repellent.  The day after we got to Janis', the itching got worse and Rob had the bites all over his hands, arms, feet, and legs.  We decided it was time to visit the doc.  Janis has an amazing doctor, so we paid this wonderful lady a visit.  After one quick look at Rob's hand, she nonchalantly stated, "Oh, you have scabies."  Scabies???  Yes, scabies.  We had heard of this, but didn't know exactly what it was.  She gave him some pretty strong medication and sent us back home to wash and serielize the sheets we had been sleeping in, since scabies is highly contagious.  We wish SO much we still had the pictures to show you!  It was SO gross.  Amy felt a little proud after the doctor said that she hadn't gotten it because she probably has a stronger immune system.  Amy is always the one to have health-related issues in our lives, so this was a moment to celebrate.  Good job immune system!  Way to attack those invaders!!

At this point, Amy was dying of curiosity and just HAD to google scabies to find out what it really is.  Oh man, it is creepy stuff!!  Read on to find out what scabies is - or skip to the next paragraph if you'd rather believe that gross things don't exist.  So, scabies.  It's a microscopic mite that finds thin areas of your skin (mostly the webbing between your fingers and toes) and burrows itself under your skin.  Then it proceeds to travel under the skin depositing eggs.  These eggs take about 20 days to mature and hatch.  Once they hatch, you develop a red, raised bump that resembles a mosquito bite and itches like nobody's business.  Amy just couldn't get over the idea that Rob was nourishing little eggs under his skin for almost three weeks.  Oh my god, totally gross.  Blech!

Anyway...thankfully the medication worked as Rob was quickly recovering.  Luckily no one else in the house caught it.  We spent a few days with Janis, then headed up to Dharamsala and Rajasthan for several weeks before heading back to Delhi, which is where we left from.  More Delhi in our next post...

Outside of Varanasi is a little town called Sarnath, which is a holy city for Buddhists.  There are extensive ruins of old Buddhist temples and holy monuments, dating back to the Jurassic Period or something.  I don't remember exactly, but they're very old and mostly worn away.

Two stupas that are in the temple ruins are reputed to contain some of the cremated remains of Shakyamuni Buddha's body, which makes them fantastically holy.  Actually, that's not quite right.  One of the stupas was dismantled partway by the ever-culturally-sensitive British during the 18th century so they could use the bricks as building materials over in Varanasi.  They found some relics (physical remains of Buddha) in there, so they tossed them in the Ganges, apparently trying to be respectful of the local Hindu customs.  Except the relics weren't from Hindu bodies, but whatever.  Maybe it made more sense at the time.  It's not like you could just put the relics in another stupa, since those bricks were needed in Varanasi as well.  But there is one gigantic stupa still standing, right next to a fenced-off area where some beggars were reaching out to the tourists through the fence. 

So our little group (us, a guy from Peru, and two Austrian girls that we met on the train) did the prescribed seven circumambulations around it (where you walk around it clockwise) while our tour guide just stood under a shade tree and watched us sweat in the hot sun and repeatedly tell the beggars "No" every time we came back around.  That was a little strange, paying some respect to Buddha by walking around his stupa while simultaneously trying to ignore beggars.  Good times!

Later, we went to a museum filled with some incredibly interesting artifacts, including the sculpture that became the national emblem of India.  We also saw some insanely cool sculptures that appeared to be mixtures of Buddha and Vishnu, which made Rob's head nearly short-circuit and explode.  According to some Hindu traditions,
Shakyamuni Buddha was the 9th incarnation of Vishnu, and so Buddhism was accepted in India as compatible with Hindu beliefs.

By the way, all the pictures here were taken from Wikipedia, since we lost our camera memory card.  Boo!  But we're only posting stuff we actually saw in person.

Well, hello there!  It's been a while!  I know, I know.  We've been back from India for almost a month now and no bloggin', but before you "boo" us off the bloggin' stage, we're going to do some mass blog posting and see if you start to like us again.  Hopefully it works. 

To bring us up to speed, we arrived, safe and sound, back to our homeland in mid October.  We are now on a road trip around the Southwest visiting friends and family.  It has rocked our faces off!  (that expression is courtesy of Amy's long time BFF, Kate the Great, whom we will see next in Denver!)  We've caught up, shared old memories, played with new little ones, had some tasty brews, and even visited the Celestial Seasonings tea factory in Fort Collins.  Amy LOVES tea, so this was beyond exciting for her.  You know what else is beyond exciting?  4 days until "Breaking Dawn" comes out in the theaters!!  Yep, I just posted that.  (If you can't tell yet, this is Amy doing to the typing right now).  Say what you will friends, but that Twilight crap is addictive.  I know you're wondering, so I'll just lay it out there.  Team Edward.

Anyway, back on track, our road trip has been awesome and I might post a few photos later.  Since this is our blog, we're okay with posting pics of ourselves, but to protect the privacy of our friends and family, no photos will be posted of them.  Unless they ask specifically, and we will be happy to!  We just made that up after we got back to the States, so sorry if we have offended our India friends by posting pictures of them...

On a bit of a sad note, right before we left India we lost a bag that housed the memory card for our camera.  This memory card had all the pictures from the first three-quarters of our trip.  After many phone calls, and much searching, we have accepted that it is gone forever.  *Sniff*  RIP memory card.  Thankfully we did the blog posts, so we have those pictures still!  The ones we're missing are Varanasi, Delhi, and Dharamsala.  Very sad, but oh well.  We will always have the memories and we can write about our experiences.  Hopefully you'll still find them interesting without the visual stimulation.  But not all is lost my friends; we have the pictures from our last two weeks in India, so we will definitely post those!

So.  Let's catch up.  Where were we?  Ah, yes, we left off at Agra, so now we're at - Varanasi.  Let's rewind and pretend we're back in India.

We should probably know more about this city than we do, but it's not like we had more than a few weeks to plan the trip.  So we went to Varanasi because we heard it was old.  Way old.  Like 4,000 years old.  Rumor has it that it's one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the entire solar system.  It is also a major place where public cremations take place.  Yep.  It's true.  So Rob was pumped to see some of the temples and check out just what a city looks like after being occupied for 4 millenia.  Amy was wondering why in the heck we would want to look at a bunch of dead bodies (RIP everyone).  Amy has some serious issues with "uninhabited" bodies and looking at them just really gives her the heeby-jeebies.  Another exciting note, Varanasi is ranked in the top three of Indian cities with the worst reputation for taking advantage of tourists, along with Agra and New Delhi.  But, hey, we survived Agra, and we were going to stay with a friend outside of New Delhi after Varanasi, so we pressed on and took an overnight train to "the city of temples," one of the holiest cities for nearly a billion Hindus.

A quick side note about India trains.  Sometimes they are surprisingly cool.  We have been taking the "3AC" sleeper cars, which means we had air-conditioned berths with a set of three bunks on either side of the space we occupied, for a total of six people in each little puka.  We've met some really interesting people on the trains, including people from Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and China, as well as some very friendly locals.  And then sometimes there are some totally rude and annoying bunkmates that turn on all the lights (and leave them on after they leave) and make a ton of noise as they get off at a train stop at 3 in the morning.  But whatever.  And you get used to the cockroaches.

Our Varanasi hotel was at the southernmost “ghat,” with a beautiful view of that holy river, Mother Ganges.  Varanasi is situated on one side of this massive river, and all along the river’s edge are various “ghats,” which are kind of like a cross between an alley and a neighborhood.  It’s a neighborhood of alleys, I guess.  And they all spit you out onto the waterfront.  Technically, the ghat is the part of the neighborhood that leads you down a series of steps to the water’s edge.  But that part of the neighborhood was underwater when we visited.  In non-monsoon season, we were told, you can walk along a sort of concrete boardwalk all the way up the city.  But due to heavy rains for months and months just prior to our visit, the river Ganges was swollen with water, and there were entire stretches of the city underwater (just along the riverside), including most of these steps that go down to the river. 

We took a sunrise boat ride up the river to get a good look at the city.  We saw a series of ghats for different purposes.  Some of them are state ghats, like one for Karnataka state, one for Kerala state, and we saw a few other Indian states represented.  Some of them are for specific gods, and these ghats will have temples for their gods.  And two of them are “burning ghats.”  They don’t call them that because the ghats themselves are on fire.  The people are.  Yeah.  They’re public, open-air crematoriums.

This is where it started to get a little mind-bending for us.  We kept on hearing about these cremation grounds at the river side, so we decided to go see one.  And what better time to go see this sight than at night, right?  So we hopped on a bicycle rickshaw (we felt bad for the driver because he had to haul Rob's fat rear-end up some steep roads) and got dropped at the edge of the neighborhood for the main burning ghat.  There were so many people!  This is what people must mean when they say that India is "an assault on the senses," because that's exactly how we felt.  So many people, noises, colors, and smells completely surrounding you.  The streets are incredibly narrow and dark - like a maze.  As we went along, people tried to start up conversations with us: “where are you from?”,  “do you want to see the burning ghat?”, and “do you want to see the bodies?”  We pretended not to understand English and simply didn’t answer the guys that approached us.  The night before, we had learned that these guys are all very devious and they will try to veer you off into a direction that you don’t want to go.  They tell you you’re going the wrong way, which gets confusing and maddening in the labyrinth of narrow alleyways.  So we decided to try to ignore them. And it seemed like it was working, despite one guy pestering us the whole way and acting like a tour guide that we didn’t hire (Indians are very good at inventing jobs for themselves!).  So we get to the area where they sell the wood for the funeral pyre, and then he tries to veer us off course.  “Don’t go down there!  That’s where the families are!  Tourists aren’t supposed to go there!  It’s for the families!”  That made us pause and start doubting ourselves.  Amy had her mouth and nose covered with a handkerchief the whole time because it was so hard to breath with all the thick smoke in the air.  She just looked at Rob, completely uncomfortable with the whole situation.  There we were, standing in the middle of all these families hauling wood and the bodies of their loved ones, wrapped in colorful and decorative cloth, down these pathways toward the burning area, and everyone was just staring at us.  We had no clue what to do.

So we moved up to a set of stairs that looked over to the platform where they were conducting the cremations. We were still below the platform, though, so the guy who had been pestering us told us to follow him up to a house where we could look down at the platform for a better view.  Against every instinct, we followed him. Up a flight of dark stairs, into a deserted-looking concrete flat with no lights, and then to a corner of a balcony where we could look down at the cremations.  We were now standing over the river, about three stories up from the water.  There was a line of people sitting in the room, along the wall opposite to the balcony.  And they all just looked at us with empty eyes while our self-proclaimed tour guide stood right next to us in the creepy darkness. We suddenly felt extremely vulnerable.  After a few seconds of this, with the hair on the back of our necks as stiff as porcupine needles, we decided to move away from the edge in case the guy decided to threaten us in any way.  This was the only time we felt in danger in India!  As quickly as possible, we booked it back down the stairs and straight out of the burning ghat.  Our "tour guide" was grabbing at Rob's arm, demanding a donation of some kind and yelling at us as we flew down the stairs and out of the ghat.  We felt lucky to be alive.

As you can imagine, we needed a break after all that craziness.  We were totally overwhelmed, freaked out, coughing from all the smoke with our feet covered completely in mysterious brown mud, and we were still trying to deflect all the touts with our kung fu skills.  Hee-yah!  Thanks to our Lonely Planet guide, we learned about this cool German bakery nearby, called Brown Bread Bakery.  We weaved through the maze of streets and finally found this diamond in the rough.  It was everything we were hoping for.  The tables were more like mattresses on the ground (something you would expect at a hooka lounge or drum circle).  This place was focused on helping the poverty stricken people of Varanasi by employing them and selling baked goods and crafts that they had made.  It was totally hippie and we loved it.   We were there for several hours.  And ohmygosh the food was frikkin' amazing.  We love you, Brown Bread Bakery.

On another day, we found ourselves at this cool cafe called Open Hand.  They also do a lot of work with the community - employing local women and keeping it fair trade.  We bought lots of gifts there!  Rob also had this amazing coffee drink they called a "Koffisch."  It was a cappuccino with a big ol' glob of honey and a healthy dash of masala tea spice in it.  Rob totally freaked out over this drink and thinks everyone needs to try it.  Just email us if you are interested in more details.

All-in-all, it was a cool experience, but Amy was definitely ready to head out of there!  What an absolutely crazy and mind-blowing place.  We wish we had the pictures to show you!!  If you're curious, google some pictures of Varanasi and you'll get the idea!