After enduring the Indian visa application process in Kathmandu I should have been forewarned as to what lay ahead. Some travelers I’d met in Nepal had described that country as being like “India-lite”. While this is a somewhat accurate description, it still understates India’s many frustrations. Although Nepal is basically a very poor country, it seemed to me to be generally fairly straightforward and even at times logical. India isn't.

After an epic trip to cross the border from Pokara, I finally arrived in Varanassi in the early hours of the morning, maybe an hour before dawn. By the time I’d arrived I was travelling with a Mexican girl who I’d met on the roof of a bus on a journey that took up half the distance from Pokora to the border. As arranged we were met at the station by an autorickshaw driver who drove us to the accommodation we’d booked. I was thankful that I’d been lucky enough to meet someone who was organised enough to book accommodation in advance, particularly of the type that arranges a pickup!

Having seen a wide variety of locally made budget transport options, I was once again intrigued by the latest local variant. Across the Asian continent, it was clear that when it came to cheap local junk-on-wheels transport, the three wheeler was king. In this India was clearly no exception. Compared to other three-wheelers I decided that the Varanasi rickshaw was significantly less roomy, although possibly provided marginally more protection against the elements.

After speeding through the empty streets, we soon came to a halt in a dark dingy laneway and were greeted by the first of Varanassi’s errant cows. Unfortunately the hotel was nowhere in sight, and the rickshaw driver signalled for us to follow him. Although wandering through narrow, pitch black laneways in a completely unfamiliar city didn’t seem like the most appealing option, really there wasn’t much other choice but to follow and hope for the best. My Mexican friend seemed quite calm notwithstanding the circumstances, so I decided to look at the situation with humour. As the walk progressed, the streets only seemed to get narrower and darker. Along the way we encountered several more cows. I hadn’t realised how big a cows horns actually get when left to their own devices. Somehow I’d always only associated horns with bulls and bullfights. Needless to say in the narrow, near pitch black laneways of Varanassi, the horns seemed bigger and the cows somehow more menacing.

The hotel was one that offered free dawn and dusk boat tours as part of the ridiculously low room rate. After finally emerging in the hotel’s reception, we found that we were just in time to take advantage of this arrangement. In any event we decided that it would be easier to persevere that day, than get up early any other day. This proved to be a wise decision in hindsight! As a result we quickly checked in, deposited backpacks in the room and descended once again into the early morning fog covering the narrow alleyways leading to the Ganges – now in a slightly larger group, and following a boat-rower rather than rickshaw driver.

Riding through the early morning mist on the Ganges in a wooden row boat is an unforgettable introduction to India. You glide past the burning Ghats witnessing several of an apparently endless series of cremations, past people washing or preparing for the day ahead, past several sleepy looking but peaceful cows. One of the most heavily polluted waterways on earth is a scene of serenity and surreal beauty. I felt about a million miles away from everything that is familiar.

Everywhere around I was confronted with reminders of death and mortality. Having recently celebrated my 30th birthday I was still able to tell myself that I was nearer to the beginning of my life than the end, but in the mists of the Ganges I became aware of how quickly that equation was changing. There was just so much that was different that it wasn’t possible to work out what to make of it all. Not for the first or last time I was comforted by the knowledge that while I was experiencing something truly amazing, I didn’t have to live there and could leave at any time I chose. When the boat returned to the original dock our small group made its way back to the hotel. Unfortunately we weren’t following the boat man this time, so the journey was made longer through several wrong turns before finally reaching the relative comfort of our new temporary home.

On awaking in the afternoon, I started feeling what would be an all to familiar sensation in India – commonly known as “Delhi belly”. I’d hardly crossed the border before I was struck by the first bout. I told myself that this was probably caused by the dinner at the train station that I’d been foolish enough to eat the night before, rather than the tasty breakfast of baked beans on toast that I’d eaten at the hotel’s rooftop restaurant for breakfast on returning from the boat ride. Once my stomach had settled, I promptly ordered another serving of beans on toast for “second breakfast”. While this may seem an unlikely remedy for an upset stomach, the combination with a drink of Coca-Cola seemed to do the trick and I managed to get out for a wander along the Ganges. The river was bathed in the early afternoon sunlight, filtered by a seemingly ever-present blanket of smog and pollution. The effect was a warm orange glow covering the whole area.

Walking along the banks of the Ganges, it became clear that the rhythm of life and death was very different here to most other parts of the world that I’d been. Looking at the whole picture, there was a bustle that gave the impression of Varanassi being a hive of activity. Looking at life more closely however, told an opposite story. Everywhere you looked were people going about their lives in no particular hurry. People bathed in the Ganges, but this wasn’t a quick process – it was something that seemed to take hours. Everywhere you looked there were people sleeping or lying about doing nothing. Indians seem to sleep with their entire body covered from head to toe in a single blanket. In the area near the burning ghat, I saw one person in this position, however after a few seconds I realised it was in fact a corpse rather than someone sleeping. The only way I could actually tell was that a foot had become uncovered and was a deathly pallor. That and he was lying near a big pile of dry wood. For the rest of my time in India I was uneasy every time I came across someone sleeping under a blanket.