Varanasi is one of the oldest and most spiritual cities in the world. Varanasi is famous for burning Hindu people next to the Ganges when they died.

I had a walk the whole day on the ghats of Varanasi. Ghats are places, where people can bath in the Ganges or where Hindu people are burned after their life. I went up and down and was breathless.

In the morning I first went to Manikarnika Ghat and saw many people getting burned. Impressive and cold shower on my body. Impressive. This was the place, where life ends. This was the place, where Hindu people are “reincarnated”. I have not seen this before and have to digest the seen things. Very interesting… Very different.

I went through all ghats, saw people bathing in the Ganges, people washing their clothes, cows bathing, many small boats, saw ash flying in the dirty, dirty Ganges and a lot of other things. The water in the Ganges is at the moment very very low. You can see it in the pictures, that it looks like a “desert”. In July, when the monsum is coming, the water rises up to 12 meter (!) and everything gets flooded.

Lonely Planet says, that there are 1.500.000 bacterias on 100 ml in the Ganges. Everything, which is above 500 bacterias/100 ml is dangerous. Ganges is really a dark soup and very, very dirty. Very dirty.

In the evening I went by boat to a ceremony on one ghat. It was very interesting - also did Pooja. Will see if I will get up tomorrow at 5.30 AM to have a morning boattrip.

Everything is fine… Weather is quite hot, it’s about 40 degrees Celsius. I drunk about 7 liter of water, good so.

So, after spending two amazing days in Amritsar, I went by bus to Pathankot and then to Chamba. It took me a litle bit more than 10 hrs. Drive was interesting, stopped two times eating some dal with rice. Had some”fruit cake” in the bus and a lot of chips… The bus-drive cost about 140 Rs (about 2 EUR).

Found an accomomodation in Chamba: Hotel Aroma Palace with a real nice view to this village in the valley. So it’s a little bit like “Heiligenblut“, as you are starring out to another hill out of your window.

Had some interesting conversations with locals and learned a lot about Hindu and the history of India. Did not know so much… Very interesting… f.e. Pakistan was part of India 60 yrs. ago, then splitted u. Bangladesh was formaly known as “East-Pakistan”…

Before going to bed I watched TV (there is a TV in every room I slept…). Did not found CNN but many sports channels. “Cricket” is very popular in India… So teams like “Kalkutta Knight Riders”… btw, I like this name…

OK. Today had some recent walks to some temples and ready to leave tomorrow early in the morning to Daramsala, where the exil-government of Tibet is located.

My stomach-barometer… If it was 50 % yesterday on a scale from good - bad, it is now going up to 70 % in direction of “bad”. Lets see… :)))

Internetconnection is very bad here and found a lausy internet-business near the market. So lets see, how I am succeeding in uploading some images and some GPS-routes…