girls in Varanasi

Varanasi, probably the holiest city in India... The river Ganges "the mother" is impressive, with people washing their clothes and themselves in the most dirty and polluted water ever. And we went to the burning ghats - not a very nice place to be, should not be a "tourist" place at all, but not as groase as I expected. It just shows that life and death belong together, and in the west we don't see much of sickness and death. In India it's all very close together. Sometimes not in a helpful way either, but still it's at least visible.

Besides the "serious" stuff we spend some nice days with Ute, whom we met at Freakstock last summer and who has been living in Varanasi for the last couple of years. We talked a lot, cooked together and... went shopping. I was glad to find out that Ute really enjoys shopping - Hajo had a free afternoon while we went to the many Bangle shops in town. Bangles are worn by nearly every indian woman, they come in all sorts of colours, glittery or plain. The shops are truly overwhelming. We spent a long time watching the guys putting together different colours, making up our individual patterns, stayed long (and bought) enough to be served some tea and felt really girly.


Even a step further in the girl's programme was our visit to one of the beauty places... My goodness, I've never been to such a place in my whole life - and then we ended up sitting one hour talking and having our feet being treated. I didn't even know how many things you can do with your feet... But turned out nicely... how lovely are the feet... :-).

Maybe all a bit too much for Hajo - "Magisches Entenhausen" (magical duckburg?) was his lecture during the following days. And see what it did to him.