India : Varanasi

After Goa, Jan and I headed to Varanasi to tour around the world's oldest living city for a few days. We had about an hour drive from the airport (which was by far the smallest airport I've ever been to) to our guest house. Once we arrived at Rahul's Guest House, we were excited that they had a restaurant on the roof and were REALLY excited when we saw that this was the view.


We met Raj at the guest house and he offered to take us out and tour us around the city for the few days we were there.

He offered an excellent rate and was super nice and informative. The first day, he took us in his rickshaw to visit some of the many temples in Varanasi. Unfortunately, a lot of the temples do not allow you to take photographs inside, but I got a few shots as we drove around the city.





Raj took us to a few of his friends shops. The first place we stopped was Ashwini's shop, where he taught us all about spices and essential oils and aromatherapy.

We also visited another friends shop, where they sold beautiful hand made scarves and bed covers. The guy who ran the shop was awesome. When we first arrived, he offered us chai and wanted to hear about where we were from and who we were.

That was probably my favorite day in Varanasi. I just really enjoyed meeting and spending time with the people in the shops and just driving around a lot of the city. Varanasi has a crazy, hectic feeling about it, but its very exciting at the same time. The next day, one of Raj's tour guide friends took us to Sarnath, a neighboring village, where we were able to see the Dhamekh Stupa and Dharmajajika Stupa, which are ruins of a Buddhist temple and where its believed that Buddha preached his first sermon.



We also saw a few other Buddhist temples that day.

The next day, we took a ride across the Ganges River, on the scariest bridge I've ever ridden across.

We went to tour around Ramnagar Fort.



Jan and I both got a little sick that day, so we took it easy for the next day and half. Our last evening in Varanasi, we decided to take a boat ride/tour down the Ganges River. We had some pretty epic views, which made for some incredible photos.




We got to see a Hindu ceremony performed at one of the ghats.

Here are a few more random photos I snapped in Varanasi that I really liked.




There are more pictures, and you can view them on my Flickr page here.