Hello India

Well where to begin, we arrived in Varanasi last night and we were shown to our room, which was not what we had asked or paid for. The staff at the hotel were not interested, in fact they were down right surly. We were shown to a very small room which was filled by the bed. We were told we would have a twin bed room overlooking the Ganges. This was not that room. When I said we wanted twin beds, they all shook their heads. Then we were shown a twin room which was bigger, the curtains were drawn so I thought I'd look behind them. All I saw was a wall, about 1 m from the window. No Ganges, just wall. So the inner Goddess came through and told them what we thought. They just looked at us. Then later the manager said we could have a Ganges view room the next day, although it only had one bed. As we are both poor sleepers and I struggle to get comfy these days  as chemo has left me with restless legs we always have twin beds. So the Inner Goddess interrupted again and told them that all we wanted was what we had already paid for. Then they added insult to injury by saying we had to pay £4 per day for internet. The Goddess roared, paid for the internet and then got in touch with our tour operators. To cut a very long story short we now have the room we paid for with twin beds. We have our own private terrace on the roof of the hotel. The. Hotel manager apologised personally and will refund us 2000 rupees for our room last evening, has given us free Wifi and gave us our dinner tonight. I think the Goddess shouting trip advisor may have helped things along a bit. 

Today we went to Sarnath were Buddha gave his first teaching to his first 5 disciples.  Just like Lumbini  Buddhists from all over the world have built monastries in the surrounding area and we had a great time visiting them. There is also a Stupa built on the site of his teaching and we did Kora around it. There were some Sri Lankan pilgrims sitting around the Stupa chanting and it was very peaceful. We sat on a bench in hearing of the chanting and meditated. It was wonderful. Our guide then stopped off at a silk weaving factory where they tried very hard to get us interested in the weaving so that they could rip us off by selling us some. This was not on the itinerary , The Goddess became very bored and so as not to waste their time told them so. So within 15 minutes we were back in the car. Tomorrow we have our first boat ride to a ceremony at sunset, the rest of the day we shall spend hanging out and resting on our private terrace and watching the frenzy of life carrying on below us. Like birds....