The last time I went on any sort of religious pilgrimage (unless you count Eurovision) was in May 1982. Pope John Paul II was at the height of his popularity and on his ‘rock star’ tour of the UK. He held a huge outdoor mass at Bagington Airfield on the edge of Coventry, where I was born and raised. The pope’s mass was a big event in Coventry – particularly for our street where just about everyone bar our house were Irish Roman Catholics (because we lived near a Catholic school). On the day of the mass we joined with everyone else to walk the five miles to Bagington. There were thousands and thousands of people descending on the site – but even that had nothing on Varanasi!

Just as Tundra Junction had been, Varanasi station was rammed. There were crowds everywhere with people arriving and departing having been on, or heading to, pilgrimage. We took a tuk tuk as far as we could, but most of the roads close to the river had been closed to vehicles – although there were still motorbikes and pedal rickshaws ploughing through the packed streets.

If I’m honest, the whole experience for me was quite unpleasant. It was a human scrum and although there were police on junctions blowing their whistle and waving their arms around, I don’t think they were making any difference. I was sandwiched close to Mike and was holding his back pack very tight as I thought if I lose him we’ll never find each other again.

As several roads converged, it went from being very crowded to a crush. It was scary. We could see how a stampede could easily happen and there’d be no way of stopping it. If anyone had fallen over they’d have been trampled underfoot. Somehow we managed to get to one side and took refuge inside an open fronted perfume shop. At one point the shop seemed to be filling up. I did slightly panic that we might get crushed to death inside this store – but then I thought, at least I’ll smell nice when they find my body!

We eventually followed another woman out of the shop and into the scrum shuffling our way forward until the crowd eased a little and then we were on the ghats (steps) on the banks of the river Ganges. The river was almost as crowded as the streets had been. There were boats full of pilgrims everywhere and on the edge of the water pilgrims were bathing themselves head to toe in the sacred waters of the Ganges. It looked pretty brown water to me, there was no way I was going near it let alone in it.

The whole sight was quite extraordinary, I can’t say I liked it though and I wasn’t overcome with any sense of spiritual awakening either. However, it was certainly working its magic on the thousands and thousands of pilgrims who’d traveled from across India to be here – and as they say ‘whatever floats your boat’.

We watched a while and took some photos before we started the return scrum back. It wasn’t quite so bad going the other way. We thought we’d better hunt some food for our long overnight train journey (the last sleeper train on our trip). We asked a tuk tuk driver to take us to where there were a few ‘malls’ (a general term for shopping areas, not the kind of Mall we have in the UK). The driver said it would be 500 rupees which we knew was an inflated price so we said no and walked instead. 

It wasn’t a long walk, but it was really horrible as the pollution and noise of beeping horns was vile. We could taste the fumes in our mouths and it made us cough, Mike is still coughing several hours later it’s that bad. We eventually found a small grocery store and then a curious supermarket called Spencer’s – think Farm Foods meets Primark with a bit of B&M thrown in for good measure! We got enough snacks to sustain us through the night and then took a tuk tuk back to the station. Our elderly driver was the slowest tuk tuk ride we’ve ever had, I said to Mike this is like ‘driving Miss Daisy’ as we sedately progressed through the crazy traffic.

Back at the station we paid 20 rupees to sit in the air conditioned waiting room with power. It was just over an hour until our final overnight train. Not wanting to be late I made sure we were on the platform well before the departure time. I’d only just worked out that the railway train tracker website also tells us the order of the carriage numbers so using this I estimated where our carriage would arrive on the platform. There are meant to be helpful little screens announcing the arrival point on the platform for each carriage but annoyingly these weren’t working.

The train was running late, but when it finally arrived it threw me as the name on the side of the carriages didn’t match the name of the train on my reservation. Also I was looking for a blue carriage as I thought that’s what A1 carriages usually would be. I thought our carriage had passed us and that we must be at the other end of the platform. I charged off Mike trying to keep up behind. I got to near the end of the train but no A1. There was a guard, so I asked him, he confirmed it was the right train but A1 was at the other end (where we’d come from) – Arghhh!

Knowing there were minutes before departure I charged down the platform pushing people out of the way, glancing back to see if Mike was keeping up (barely). I got to A1 with moments to spare bundled my bags on and looked back willing Mike to catch up. He made it just – phew! We collapsed into our two berth cabin, relieved not to have missed our train. I was dripping with sweat, I took off a few layers and lay down on my bunk to decompress.

The overnight train was one of the noisiest we’d been on (passengers not the engine!), and staff kept disturbing us to clean the cabin, try to sell us snacks, ask for dinner choice, bring dinner, clear dinner! It all added up to a not very tranquil night’s sleep. I think I grabbed a couple of blocks of 2-3 hours. We had to be awake at 5am to change trains at Ambala Cant junction for the final short stretch to Chandīgarh. I’m writing this on the connecting train. I will be very pleased to get to Chandīgarh (est arrival time 7.30am) and check into our hotel. I need a shower and my clothes are so grubby after the last few days of dirt and dust in Jaipur, Agra and Varanasi so some laundry needs washing too. We should arrive in time to freshen up and have breakfast before a day of sightseeing in India’s modernist city designed by (among others) the famous  Swiss-French modernist architect Le Coubusier.