Life is just a bowl of palak paneer

So I'm here in Varanasi, and everything's seemingly fine. I'm not in love with my guesthouse, though more because they're anal and my room is at the top of 4 flights of amazingly steep stairs than because there's actually anything wrong.

I have to say I'm starting to understand why people who come to the northern part of India have such freaked out first reactions to the country. Arriving here today (my first classically "North Indian" city on the tourist trail), I saw a lot of the things I expected to see when I got here and notably didn't. Very, very dirty, dusty, and polluted. Extremely crowded. Crazy traffic. Slums. Beggars. Really blatant touts. Of course, having been here more than a month already none of it affected me in the way it does someone who's been in India for 2 or 3 days and seen ONLY this. I've seen this stuff already, just not as intensely, and also seen a lot of beauty and kindness, too.

Varanasi is amazing. It has a similar vibe to the main village part of Hampi, but exponentially, well, MORE (good news - my guesthouse is one of the easiest to find in the whole city, so I can't really get too lost). Funny, I thought it would be way more crowded. Maybe it's the time of day -- I got in around noon and have been settling in, eating lunch, and exploring in the intervening 3 hours. It seems shockingly empty to me. Emptier even than Darjeeling was, and it's low season there right now. There are also a lot more white people around than I thought there would be.

I've already had to walk by the main burning ghat, which is right next to my hotel. Couldn't bring myself to look around too much; there are some things I just don't want to see. I could feel the heat, though.