Nightmare leaving Varanasi

Today, we left Varanasi to head towards Agra. We slept in and opted to rest before our night train as we'd had a few very full on days in Varanasi. After lunch at Dosa Cafe, we picked up our bags and said our goodbyes to our host around 1pm to head to Mughal Sarai for our 3.40pm train. This is normally a 45min drive, but our host warned us to leave 2hrs early as roads might be blocked due to the Rasjasthan Prime Minister visiting, as well as general traffic, and to tell our driver that main routes might be closed. So on his advice, we left over 2.5hrs early.

We walked the 10mins out of the old city to the main road, where our troubles began when we tried to use Uber and no one would pick our ride up. We could see a number of cars and tuktuks near us on the app, but none of them would pick up our ride. Half an hour later, we eventually negotiated with a tuktuk driver to take us. At this point, our train was showing on google as being delayed to 4.10pm, so we weren't too worried as we were on our way.

Our tuktuk driver crossed the River Ganges, and from there, there are three ways to get to Mughal Sarai - the northern highway, southern highway or a rural, bumpy road which runs between these. Our driver decided to take the northern highway, driving for 20mins before seeing that the highway was blocked due to the Prime Minister visiting. This wasn't a huge problem as we then mapped a route for him, which took us along the central rural road. At this point, it was only 2.40pm and Google Maps was estimating the drive to be 20mins, so we thought we were fine, but we were wrong. After driving for about 10mins with Google Maps (and us) guiding him, our driver decided to go rogue and start asking locals which way to Mughal Sarai. Everyone was telling him to turn around and take the northern highway, with apparently no idea that the highway was closed. He then turned around and started driving back the way we came. He would not stop driving until we yelled that we would not pay him unless he drove the way we told him. We guided him for the next 40mins along bumpy roads, keeping an eye on our Google Maps to make sure we were on track, whilst urging him to drive faster as our train was now showing as being on time, and if we didn't hurry, we would miss it. At one point, the barrier over a train crossing started lowering very slowly. He started to brake and we had to yell for him to make the crossing or we would definitely miss our train as train crossings take at least 5mins due to the length of the trains (often 1km or longer).

We eventually made it to the train station at 3.32pm, with 8mins to run from the road over to Platform 6. We were very stressed because we didn't know how big the train station was and Indian trains are very long (again, around 1km for regional trains) and can take a long time to find your coach. After battling with elderly Indian people on the escalator who refused to move for us, and Cass almost pushing over a number of people on the run to the train, we finally reached the train and just jumped on the first coach we saw.

We were relieved to have made it, albeit puffing from sprinting across the train station and up and down stairs with 10kg bags on our backs - only the 2nd time on this trip so far where we have really had to run. We walked down to our assigned coach and, as usual, found someone else sleeping in one of our beds. Cass was really unimpressed that almost every time we'd gotten onto a train, there was someone else in her bed. He eventually moved after we insisted he was in our seat. We now have 13hrs on the train until we reach Agra.

Agra is our last (proper) stop in India, just to see the Taj Mahal before we leave. While we have met lovely people and had some great experiences in India, we have also found it incredibly uncomfortable and hard travelling and are looking forward to moving onto Sri Lanka.Læs mere