At Varanasi we stayed at a nice guest house which was call Monu family guest house. It was rather small, with no hot water, but was clean and with no mosquitoes so I didn't complain. This is also where we met a lovely Spanish woman named Maria who toured with us during our stay in Varanasi.
The town is fairly interesting because it is along the river ganges, which is very important/ holy river to the Hindu people. Hindy people come here from all over India to die and have their bodies cremated and their ashes put into the river. People wash their clothes, bath and even drink this water. This is fairly unsanitary on two levels, 1. being that there are ashes from people in there, and 2. towns downstream from the city put raw sewage directly into the water.
Every single night they hold a ceremony where they put on a religious show (I don't know what it is called or why they do it), but many people show up. Probably about 150-200 Indians and tourists alike.
Since the city doesn't have much to offer in terms of excitement ( no alcohol is sold near the banks of the river), so we did a lot of time just relaxing, which was very very nice. During one day we made a day trip to some small Buddhist ruins which are in Saranath. Which was quite amazing. They had a giant stoopa, and small remains of monasteries, that apparently held 1500 monks. This was a very serene place, and would have been great to spend some time there and just relax/think, but we had a bunch of other things to see.
Although Varanasi doesn't have too much to offer in terms of excitement , it's very holy nature, beautiful scenery, along with some good company it made a wonderful stay.
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