The bus didn't only leave nearly an hour late, but it broke down half way through the drive which added another hour onto the trip. As you read in the schedule above, there is little room for error and everything had to go perfectly in order for me to get in on time. Along with this, the British Gypsy girl sitting next to me sucked! I tried to make small talk and her response was, "I'm not really that talkative....and I have a boyfriend." WTF?! Fortunately I was able to meet and talk to Kevin (a Canadian) and Tom (a Dutchman) who really made this adventure bearable.
Crossing the boarder was interesting too as we arrived in a haze of dust, smog, and tons of people trying to scam us. We all exchanged money and of course got supremely ripped off. Then, we ended up missing the last jeep and were forced to take a taxi to the train station. It turned out we would be arriving 10 minutes before my train where Tom and Kevin were going to attempt to get on (fat chance). To my luck, there were processions for marriages EVERYWHERE and the roads were completely blocked off just 1km before the station. We ended up getting out and walking over to the station to find my train had left 20 minutes too early. I was sooooo pissed!
We found out there was actually one more train leaving for Varanasi and that we could only get general seating. The ticket was $.90 and we were lucky enough to find that the gypsy girl showed up and wanted to tag along with us. Ugh she sucks! We ended up finding a row of seats that we could all share but still not be comfortable. The train ride was really painful, really cold, and just didn't end. At times we would wake up and notice we were surrounded by Indian's that had squeezed into the smalls spaces between us while we slept, and just stared at us. It was kinda weird but I was warned about the staring.
When we finally got to Varanasi, we had each slept maybe a total of 2 hours in the 26 hour journey. We got in a Auto rickshaw, found a guest house, and went right to bed.
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