28/ 100 Baba Dog

After some very enjoyable time in Jodhpur it was time to leave and head to a place we have already explored twice before, but will probably never tire of visiting. Varanasi, in the state of Uttar Pradesh (or U.P. as Indian people like to call it, which confused us greatly at first).

Getting to Varanasi was always going to be a little less simple than simply jumping on a train between two cities. We had multiple modes of transport to contend with, including a flight connection at Delhi, and I knew from experience that even getting from Varanasi airport to the guesthouse that night was going to be troublesome.

The journey actually began well. We said goodbye to our friendly hosts (a link to our guesthouse is at the end of the page) and jumped into a Tuk Tuk for a very enjoyable ride through the sunny streets of Jodhpur before arriving at the airport with plenty of time to spare.

The excessive bureaucracy began almost immediately. On the pavement outside the main door were two police. The first one asked to see our passports, but not our boarding passes, so I showed him and put everything back away again. We then had to visit the second policeman, just a few steps away, who wanted to see our boarding passes, but not the passports. I had to dig everything out of my bag yet again only to find that he didn’t really need to look at them – he just wanted to see that we had them.

I had already used about 98% of my patience reserves and the day was still young.

We knew from our previous journeys that when you enter the airport in India it is quite common to have all your bags scanned immediately, but then you have to collect them and take them to the next stage yourself. The problem we faced was that not everybody knew what was happening so other passengers were loading their suitcases onto the scanner and walking away to go and check-in. This meant that there was a large buildup of bags at the scanned end, but nobody had stopped people adding more bags to the other end. There was a lot of shouting from staff and complete craziness.

It is in situations like this that I always think ‘this must happen here all day, every single day, so why has nobody fixed it?’.

Once your suitcase has been scanned they seal the zips with a cable-tie, only my bag was a rucksack and didn’t have any zips so they used the sort of banding machine that they use in factories to seal boxes. The only way I was going to be able to get it off again was with my penknife, But that was inside the sealed bag. I decided that would have to be a problem for another time.

With everything scanned you then follow a very complex queue, past the lone cleaner attempting to clean a huge piece of scratched glass with a dry sheet of newspaper, to the check-in desk. Before you can access the desk, though, you have to show your boarding pass again , perhaps to make sure you didn’t lose it during the scanning chaos.

Just the day before we had been having a chat with an Indian man about the fact that everywhere in India there are people doing jobs that aren’t really necessary so it was quite amusing to arrive at the check-in to find no fewer than four people working per desk.

The actual person doing the checking-in was deaf (he was wearing a polo-shirt that informed us of this) and performed his duties absolutely perfectly. But just in case he got stuck there was a lady standing there ready to help. We weighed our cases on the scales and a young chap appeared and lifted the bag from the scales and to a space just behind. Then another young chap picked up the luggage again and put it onto the conveyor belt at the back. Every single one of the four desks had the same number of people working there.

Then, of course, there was another member of staff who checked our boarding passes again, and then another who stood pointing to a sign with an arrow which, in turn, pointed towards security. Yes, the first baggage scan wasn’t enough scanning. Now we had the big boss of scanning to contend with where, oddly, we could leave any liquids in our bags, but had to take out anything remotely electrical or battery operated. Of course we didn’t know that so all of our liquid-related preparations were pointless.

Once we had made it through the extra-secure security there was another nice lady who wanted to see our boarding passes just another time. You can never be too be sure.

Here’s where we stayed when we were visiting Jodhpur. I cannot recommend it highly enough – Jodhpur Heritage Haveli.

If you are interested in reading about a very interesting experience we had when we took a sleeper train from Varanasi to Agra you can find the multi-part story here: https://trevormwilson.substack.com/p/the-marudhar-express-part-1-choosing