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As always, getting to my destination city was an adventure in itself. On one of my trains between Agra and Varanasi, I was harassed by a drunk man claiming to be an army officer who demanded to see my identification papers. His friends calmed him down, bought me some tea, and chatted with me until he climbed into his bunk and passed out.

"The Oldest Living City in the World"

Brandon Smith
2006-02-23 14:32:51

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As always, getting to my destination city was an adventure in itself. On one of my trains between Agra and Varanasi, I was harassed by a drunk man claiming to be an army officer who demanded to see my identification papers. His friends calmed him down, bought me some tea, and chatted with me until he climbed into his bunk and passed out.

On the long train ride, I had plenty of time to try and steel myself for the onslaught that awaited me in Varanasi. From what I had read in my guidebook, it sounded like the sort of place where the unwary traveller would be eaten alive by touts and scammers. There were warnings that "criminal elements" (a Hindu mafia, if you please) operated in the city, intercepting tourists at arrival points like the train station.

And no sooner had I stepped off the train than I was, in fact, intercepted. A man immediately approached me, offering me a rickshaw ride to anywhere I wanted to go, for only five rupees. Fortunately, I had had enough experiences at that point to know that any offer in India that seems too good to be true is. I was later told that if
I had gone with the man, he almost certainly would have extracted a much larger sum from me than five rupees (10 cents)--namely, whatever I had on me.

Even once I found a rickshaw driver who agreed to take me to my hotel of choice, he tried valiantly to steer me away. He named several other hotels that would be, in his view, better choices. He repeatedly assured me that it is "dangerous" to stay in the part of the old city I was heading for. Maybe he was telling the truth, but I had made up my mind as to where I was going.

I never would have found the hotel on my own. The streets of the old city are too narrow even for rickshaws, so we had to go the last half mile or so on foot, the driver leading, myself trying to weave through the crowds and keep up. I have been to a lot of towns that are alleged to have maze-like quarters where one could easily ...

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