After a week in Bombay I started to get itchy feet again. First the wedding happened, with events going on for a few days, then a bout of food poisoning that left me bed ridden for days. Once I finally booked a ticket out of Bombay, I was delayed yet again by an error on my train ticket.

I was due to leave for Varanasi at midnight on the 14th, yet due to the lady behind the counter screwing things up, she instead put the 13th on my ticket, meaning I had already missed my train, lost 2000 rupees (£20) and would have to book another.

I was at Meetali’s flat when I realised the cock up, and we promptly took an hours trip to CST station to sort it out and get me on another train. Little did we expect what lay in store for us when we arrived.

We were directed to the office of the Head Ticket Collector, a tall, beefy looking man and the only guy in the office wearing a suit. He sent us away to buy a general ticket to Varanasi, and return back to him so he can change it into an air conditioned sleeper for me.

As we sat there waiting for him to return, one employee in the room started yelling at us very aggressively. Meetali had her feet crossed on a chair and I was leaning on the table. Now, any civilized human being with even the most basic manners would have said, “Excuse me, would you mind not leaning against that or having your feet on the chair”. But this Neanderthal decided to scream, shout and pound his chest like a caveman who’d become aggravated because we’d eaten his food.

Things got worse, as eventually we met the head ticket collector outside who invited us back in again and was meant to sort our tickets out so I could leave that night. The guy who yelled at us initially told this man what happened, about how we dared to lean on a table, and all of a sudden hell broke lose.

We were promptly thrown out of the office, and removed from the train station, as this primitive man decided to scream and cause an unnecessary scene to make his day more exciting. Due to his ape like etiquette and prehistoric brain, he couldn’t fathom why a woman would place her feet on a chair, or why I’d casually lean on a table. The way both men were yelling at Meetali and I, you’d think they were about to pull a punch. She even told me afterwards this could have happened if we hadn’t left. I was shocked by what she said, that these men could have easily beaten us over something so small.

I lost my temper for the first time in years, and started yelling at the guy for how he was treating us, especially how he was treating a woman. He continued, screaming and spitting in my face until security was called and we had to leave the station, ticketless. I then remembered the words I had been told and read countless times before my trip started. Something all travel writers love to write it’s become almost cliche: “Indian people are friendly”.

This sentence annoys me for a number of reasons. Firstly, you cannot generalize a country of 1.2 billion people. Secondly, my own personal experience suggests something very different. I’ve met some friendly Indians, and I’ve met some despicable Indians. I’ve met Indians of gracious manner, showing me hospitable warmth as they invite me into their homes and exchange congenial pleasantries. But I’ve also met some callously rude Indians, who’d spit at my feet, push me out the way, shout at me unnecessarily and behave more like chest thumping primates than evolved human beings.

I finally secured a ticket to Varanasi, and arrived after a pleasant 30-hour train journey from Mumbai. This was more bearable than the previous trip, as I splurged out a little for an AC berth and actually found myself becoming too cold during the journey, despite the heat outside. I figured if there’s a heatwave in the north that’s killing people by the hundreds, I wasn’t going to moan about spending an extra few quid on an air-conditioned berth.

A guy spoke to me on the train, an engineer who worked in Pune. I was sat by the door staring out at the countryside like Michael Palin in a documentary, when he approached me and said “What is your good name?”. I then decided to make an effort and have a conversation with this nice man, as that’s what good travellers do.

As I sat down beside him I realised I only understood 1 out of every 5 words he spoke, which made conversation hard to endure. The beastly sound of the train didn’t help, and made me miss a few more words of what he was saying. It usually went something like, “efiub uewn wieubg very difficult wufuiew uwehfieew wiuehfbv vuwef good times……..fuinfuwf runeg wofvnbo wifwf you understand?”.

I also got the feeling as I said my words very slowly and carefully that he found me equally as hard to listen to. So we sat there, chatting away whilst he pretended to understand me and I pretended to understand him.

On arrival in Varanasi, I got a manual rickshaw for the first time, which requires a man to exert physical effort and manually pedal the bike instead of placing a foot on an accelerator. The guy who was on the train with me told the driver where I needed to go.

“He says 60 rupees”, he told me.

This was almost twice the going rate for that distance. I’d been told it was 10 rupees per kilometer, and my hotel was 3km away. But the guy looked a mess; smutty unkempt hair and ragged clothes that looked decades old and teeth so stained and black I thought they’d been smudged in crude oil. I agreed to 60 rupees (60 pence).

When we arrived at the hotel, I paid him and found a look of confusion on his face. He then yelled something in Hindi to me, which I didn’t understand. I then got another guy off the street to translate, and found out the driver wanted an extra 10 rupees. He justified it because the hotel was on a slope that he had to climb up, which wasn’t even that steep to begin with.

Still, the guy was in a state. His face looked torn and his teeth could have given any dentist horrifying nightmares. He also made exaggerated ‘wipe sweat off forehead’ movements, in order to prove he struggled to get me there. Despite my anger at him not keeping to our deal, I gave him another 10 rupees. I’ve seen other travellers haggle with the poor, and it’s completely pathetic. A rich white westerner arguing over 10 pence, something they wouldn’t even pick up if they saw it on the ground back home.

Varnasi is a place of intense spirituality. I enjoyed the festivities in the evening, and the place did feel ironically alive despite themes of death hovering over the town. It certainly had character, and it’s one of the most interesting places I’ve visited thus far. The Ganges are used by Hindus to wash away their sins and to cremate their deceased relatives. Pilgrims travel for days to reach Varanasi when they feel they’re close to death, given that it’s seen as an auspicious place to die.

The town itself was the dirtiest I’ve seen in India. Rubbish tipped everywhere in a display to match that of Glastonbury festival on a Monday morning. Cow shit littered the streets with unwashed children covered in a blanket of flies. As cows are holy to Hindus, there seemed to be more in Varanasi than anywhere else I’ve been. It is said there is more cow waste in this tiny city then in the whole of the state of Goa, and treading in it is completely unavoidable. This excrement is not something to be repulsed by, but something to gaze upon with divine holiness. I think this is where the phrase ‘Holy Shit’ came from.

Eating out proved difficult, as many restaurants would have 100 items on their menu, only to serve 5. Most of my time eating out consisted of conversations like:

“Can I order some lemon pancakes”

“We don’t have”

“OK I’ll just have beans on toast”

“Not possible”

“Ok just tell me what you have on the breakfast menu”

“Bread and butter, you like?”

“Anything else?”

“No”.

I then had to remind myself that I’m in one of India’s poorest and most desperate regions.

I walked around the main ghats in the morning, watching people bathe in the filthy Ganges, seeing dead bodies be cremated and sent off by their families. Now I’d attended an Indian wedding and a funeral. I found it odd how, in the midst of this extremely emotional and private affair, these people would welcome a young curious foreigner to gaze upon the burning corpse of their dearly beloved.

I stood there watching a cremation, when an elderly gentleman approached me and began jabbing away in my ear. He started throwing out facts about the ritual, and about the area. He went on for about 12 minutes whilst I just stood there, nodding and trying to give the best possible signal that I wanted him to leave. I knew what was coming though, as every act of friendliness in Varanasi comes at a price.

“Now, all new comers to these rituals must provide a donation. Please give”.

I said no and he asked me to leave. He was definitely lying, as I’d read about this scam countless times online. I then said I would leave, gladly, as the cremation had finished. He then followed me:

“Ok no donation necessary, but at least something for me for talking to you and giving you information these last few minutes”

I stopped, turned around and gave him my angry eyes and said, “Kindness shouldn’t have a cost. Now fuck off!”.

This may seem harsh on my part, but imagine if someone tried to scam money from you at a funeral back home. The moral indecency and avaricious behaviour of people like this gives India a terribly bad name. He then started yelling at me as I walked off, screaming obscenities and punching the air. Indian people are friendly.

Varanasi was without a doubt full of the most annoying inhabitants in India. Everyone wanted to speak to me, to be my friend, show me around, give me knowledge; knowledge I could easily find online. I spent the entire day experimenting with humanity, trying my best as Diogenes did in Ancient Greece to find ‘an honest man’. But it was futile. Everyone in Varanasi I met was either a liar, a cheat, a charlatan or just generally awful in character.

Varanasi seemed to abide by that typical Indian rule of, ‘the holier the place, the filthier it is’. The Ganges, the holiest river in India, is considered to be the 6th most polluted river in the world. Reports have suggested that the water has a fecal coliform MPN of 88,000 per 100ml, compared to a desirable level of 500 per 100ml.

As I watched these Indians bathe in shit and burn corpses in broad daylight in front of dozens of spectators, I realised I hadn’t eaten the whole day, and it didn’t look like I was going to either.

After 2 days in this holy city I moved on to Agra and Delhi. The India I was experiencing now was the India people always talk about back home. Desperately poor, full of lying scum and dishonest cheats. South India was not this bad, and I feel it’s the places more used to western tourism that breed the worst people. It’s not an Indian problem, it’s a global problem. You’d find the same detestable behaviour from Bangkok to Cairo. Agra, Delhi and Varanasi are hit spots on the tourist trail, and from my travels I have learnt that the more tourists a place gets, the higher level of moral decrepitude occurs amongst the local population. I was to finish with this region shortly and move on to the Himalaya regions. A region with a cool climate, friendly people, Buddhist monks and solitude. This was the India I started to crave.