We arrived safely in kolkata after a very long night train. Varanasi was fascinating, but we are thrilled to be away from it. Congested with cars, bikes, motorcycles, people, pollution, cows, goats and dogs the city was suffocating. The tiny narrow alleyways were confusing and littered with rubbish and terrible cow diahrea landmines. You cannot imagine the smell. The cow-considered holy- roam the streets of urban varanasi eating whatever they can manage to find (mostly trash and plastic). Sadly and ironically, the cows/buffalo are dying a slow painfull death as the plastic strangles their digestive tract. The holy ganges river is the place of excitement in this city. Millions of hindus come to varanasi to die and end the cycle of rebirth. All day people come to the river to do laundry, bathe, wash their buffalo, and cremate their relatives. The most affecting were the burning ghats where up to 130 cremations a day take place. A giant platform of wood is completed with a corpse that is doused in butter and lit on fire. Seeing entrails and bone of burning corpses was an image worse than the latest horror films. Not all are cremated-children under 10, lepers, small pox, sadhus and a few others are simply caste into the river (more recently tied to a slab of concrete).

The holy ganges has no free molecules of oxygen-making it septic, and is 1.5 million times the amount of fecal-coliform considered safe to bathe in. Everyday sewege and trash flows freely into the sacred waters. People drink the water eagerly as they bathe.

Yesterday, as we were eating lunch brandon was again complaining of a sore neck (as he had been for several days) and upon closer inspection, deep within his beard was a tick that had been feasting since our time in the jungle. We returned to the hotel to get tweezers and the ganga fugi family looked on in horror as I touched a blown out match head to his face. The little sucker came out but he still has a sore neck and a little bit of swelling. We will probably go to the health clinic to make sure its nothing serious tomorrow morning. Anxious to be home, we miss you all very much.

Kolkata-Delhi- 5pm
Layover
Delhi- Chicago- 1am (10hours)
Layover
Chicago-DFW-8am
Layover
DFW-Amarillo- arrive 12:40pm