Christmas Day 2006 started on the train, but we arrived at the Varanasi train station at about 4:30 am. We met our driver there, who told Jeff that his car was on the other side of a bridge and that we’d take a taxi there, and we set off.
We had thought we’d be going a short distance in the taxi, then walking over a small bridge to where our driver’s car was. It was a really cold and really long tuk tuk truck drive and not such a small bridge:
That was a long walk for Christmas morning, especially with my huge backpack on.
pretty!
We eventually got to our car and our driver told us he was going to take us down to the river for a boat ride. None of us were really thrilled to hear that – we were exhausted and just wanted to go to our hotel. Luckily we listened to him, because our boat ride really made Christmas day.
After the boat ride, our driver was missing. He finally came running up, all dressed in purple no less, all “fresh and clean” from his dip in the Ganges. Mmmm.
Then we saw the goat – that’s a separate story.
Anyways! We got to our hotel and they didn’t have rooms for us. TOOK the reservation but didn’t HOLD the reservation and all that. So we had breakfast while we waited for them to sort themselves out, build more rooms, whatever. After about two hours a different driver (how suprising, purple guy didn’t come back) came in to see us and told us he was taking us to a different hotel. Off we went – aaand no rooms there either.
Our killer fatigue was making us very grumpy and very “HELLO! IT’S CHRISTMAS, we’ve been up since FOUR am, LONG WALK and all – could we get a BREAK HERE?”
Jeff was on the phone to Lucky and to “the Doctor” (the tour guy in Delhi) while Mo and I chatted to a lonely young chinese guy who’d been working in Varanasi for a month. He was very nice, but very talkative for our frames of mind. But so sweet – when he heard we had no rooms he said “No problem, you all sleep in my room!”
We also asked to look into ways of getting us the hell out of India. We were exhausted and were supposed to have another full day in Varanasi, then another overnight train ride to Calcutta, which would mean no sleep, just to wait around in Calcutta for the day to get on our late night flight to Bangkok – again no sleep. We were DONE.
The Doctor told Jeff he could get us a flight from Varanasi to Delhi and then to Bangkok after a seven hour layover, all for only $750 US. OK…no. I guess we’re staying.
Finally at about noon, they found rooms. I said to Jeff “If there’s no hot water, I’m jumping out the window” (the last hot shower I’d had was in Jaipur two days ago). Guess what? No hot water.
As I was deciding if I should laugh or cry, Jeff knocked on my door and said the second driver had found us a flight straight from Varanasi to Bangkok.
Let’s go.
Our driver and this flight were our Christmas presents from the universe. You cannot even fly to Calcutta from Varanasi, it is a tiny, tiny airport. Thai Airways had just recently started flights to Bangkoks, they were only on Mondays, it was leaving now, and it was cheap. We loved this driver!
We zoomed off to buy our tickets and rushed to the airport (felt very “Amazing Race”-ish).
We landed in Bangkok around 7:30. Bangkok looked clean and lovely and bright and sparkly after India and we were all very glad to be there.
After a Chang and sorting ourselves out at New Siam II we headed down to Khoa San and ended up at Burger King (mmmmm beef).
While we were eating I realized this was Christmas dinner. Awesome.
After dinner we all crashed. It was definitely the most interesting, amazing, frustrating, crazy and awesome Christmas day ever.
