WALKING FROM DESASVAMEDH GHAT
Today we made our first visit to the center of Varanasi. We squeezed into a motorcycle rickshaw with Todd sitting on the bench with the driver giving Susie and me more room in the back. The two lane main road downtown, with three lanes going and two lanes returning, with all sorts of vehicles weaving and inching along and filling every space. We could have walked just as fast, bicycles were most able to slip through the cracks in the traffic and after them the motorcycles, but we could only start and stop, three feet at a time, lurching along. We were on our way to our favorite Japanese restaurant in Varanasi, Megu, in the heart of the old city on Vishvanath Gully. But alas, after we slowly made our way up the narrow walkway filled with pilgrims with brightly colored shops on each side where we saw the signs to Megu, we got there and found it gone, a modern glassed in sari shop in it’s place. The pandemic had a great toll on Varanasi, a tourist town, closing up all businesses for at least a year, which I will talk about later. Megu, apparently, could not survive both the absence of Western tourists but Indian pilgrims as well.
So we ate at Keshari Restaurant on the Main Street down to the ghats, now a pedestrian only street with all kinds of wonderous sights on the way. We were the only westerners in Keshari where before it would have been half westerners. The vegetarian thali was delicious.
After eating we walked along the narrow back streets where the only vehicles were motorcycles which blasted their way through pinning us to the walls.
I will include a few of the sights we saw in our first day in Varanasi.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 