We arrive in Varanasi at 4:30am and decide to leave our rucksacks at the station while we explore the town and find somewhere to stay. My first impression is that this place is a total dump, it is by the far the most dirty place I have ever been to, there is rubbish everywhere and surprisingly cow dung everywhere. Cows, pigs and other assorted farmyard animals are roaming the streets and the whole place smells disgusting.

We take an auto-rickshaw from the station, the driver claims to drop us at the Golden Temple, however we soon find out that we have been ripped off and are nowhere near it! Anyway, we enter the old town which is a maze of nameless lanes and alleys, and manage to find one of the guesthouses which is recommended in the Rough Guide, unsurprisingly a tout shows up and escorts us to the reception, he will obviously claim a commission if we decide to stay. It is not very nice so we decide to try the Pooja Guesthouse, this one is better, so we check in.

We then have breakfast in the restaurant which is set on the top floor of the building and has excellent views over the city and river. After breakfast we explore the city and go for a walk along the river and see the ghats, we then head back into town and are followed persistently by a rickshaw driver. It is stifling hot as we wander the streets, after a while we decide to take a rickshaw back to the hotel as we are quite tired.

On the way back we pass the rickshaw driver who was hassling us earlier, he throws his arms up in disgust that we are not using his services!

Dinner was at a hotel/hostel on the river front and was by far the worst pasta I have ever experienced, in fact it was so bad neither of us ate very much at all.

In the morning we visited a large temple made of red brick at the other side of the city. It was very impressive and overlooked a lake, some guy tried to charge us for leaving our shoes outside, they will try to make money at every opportunity!

After some lunch at a nice small hotel near the river we hailed a bicycle rickshaw and decided to head to the Fort which is situated across the river. We agreed a price with the driver and set off. After 5 minutes his pedal broke so he stopped and I tried to help him fix it, unfortunately the fix was temporary so he stopped at one of the many roadside cycle mechanics situated around town to get it fixed.

The journey continued and after a while we reached the river and crossed over the floating barrage bridge to reach the fort. He dropped us outside the fort and we headed inside only to find it was closed for lunch so we bought a drink and wandered around in the stifling heat waiting for it to open. Eventually they opened it and we looked around the dusty, unkempt museum which had a collection of quite random artifacts.

After wandering around the fort for a while we took the rickshaw back to town and after an argument with the driver, who demanded more money from us, we headed off to find somewhere to eat. The guidebook suggested a pizza place on Asi Ghat which turned out to be very good, Katerina was particularly pleased with the homemade apple pie.

After dinner we walked back along the ghats to the hotel. After some time relaxing in the hotel we decided to have one last look at the Ganges in the evening so we walked towards the Burning Ghat, which is where people are cremated and their remains are left in the river.

As we approached the ghat a guy started talking to us, telling us not to take photographs (fair enough) and told us to follow him for a better view of the ghat. I stupidly followed him as he went up a dark stairway and into a dark building on the ghat, once inside we decided it was a bad idea to stay so we left immediately. As we left he demanded that we leave a donation for the old peoples hostel, as these old people would die soon and could not afford any wood to which be cremated (apparently this is a common scam) which is what he claimed the building was that we had been in. When I refused he started getting very angry and started cursing us, saying that we should pay up, he shouted at us so we left and headed back to the hotel.