Night Train to Veranasi

I thought it would be fun and a good way to meet Indians on a personal level. It was neither. My train, the Sheva Ganga Express, was to leave Delhi @ 6:30pm for a 14 hour trip to Veranasi.. My pre-assigned seat was in a compartment meant to sleep four. It consisted of two facing benches and two platforms over those benches that were to be used as four beds. Arriving first, I sat there alone wondering what I was to do if some females were to be my companions. Sure enough, a young Indian man and woman appeared shortly before takeoff, looked at me and apparently had the same question. They proceeded to make up a fifth bed across the aisle after which the man departed. The woman mounted the bed, pulled the curtain so that she was completely hidden from view and I never saw her again. I was alone. I did meet an English couple on the platform while waiting for the train and expected to see them in the dining car. There was no dining car. Fear engulfed me. Was there a bathroom?

I told a young man who asked, that I would like dinner. At 8:30 pm he brought a tray to me which consisted of 6 tinfoil covered containers the contents of which were unrecognizable. Inasmuch as they were warm, I said a prayer that they were recently hot and timidly ate several morsels and some roti. OK, at best. I refused all offers of water, tea and other liquids, preferring my bottle of water I had been advisec to bring. I chained my suitcase to the bench, closed my curtain, pushed a scraggy pillow up against the window, turned off the light and hoped for sleep. It came on and off. Often I was woken by the boot steps of several armed guards, with rifles and automatic weapons (India is an armed camp)but the night somehow passed.Although there was no bathroom as we know it, there were two enclosures between cars that contained a hole in the floor and a crude shower head meant to clean out the basin surrounding the hole, after its use. In early dawn, I awoke from a slumber and looked out right into the close up window-filling face of a camel. Since he was so close I was unable to tell whether he had one or two humps.

Vernasi, named after the Verna and Nasi rivers which flow through and not the Ganga for which it is famous, is the oldest continuously occupied city on earth. I existed long before Thebes or Babylon were built and today, has 1 million people in the city and 2 million in the surrounds. I am staying at the Clark House, one of
the best hotels in Veranasi, but several cuts below the other hotels in Delhi and Istanbul. Today was Buddha day for me. Spent several hours the afternoon with my guide, Mulak, in Saranak ten miles outside of Veranasi, the place were Buddha gave his first address following his attainment of the enlightment. Although Buddah was born in India and spent his life in and around Varanasi, Buddhism no longer is practised by any significant part of the Indian population, most Buddist now living in Japan, Tibet, China and Sri Lanka. Did you know that India is the only country in the world that has never invaded it's neigbor.??