Three flights to Varanasi

So here we are in Moscow now, slowly sorting out the photos we made during our trip to Varanasi and writing posts on our stay there. Here's the first one, how we got there in the first place.

The road to Varanasi started from Moscow Domodedovo airport and through Doha - by Qatar Airways. First we have booked the seats online beforehand and printed out the boarding passes.

Then we were perplexed to see a strange Terminator-like metal structure in the illuminator - it was spraying our plane with some de-icing chemicals.

Qatar Airways boasts a cool back-seat in-flight entertainment for every passenger with movies, soap operas, some basic games, news and a lot of other things that make you poke the seat, sometimes causing   slight disturbance with the passenger seating in a row before you )

It also has a wide array of maps, showing the position of the airplane. Good for those, who need to keep up their geography studies.

And then we arrived to Doha airport. If Doha is not your final destination, and it is mostly so, you will have a yellow-colored ticket holder, and you will need to disembark from the bus, that takes you from your airplane, on the first stop.

Duty Free shop at Doha. A lot of really cool stuff at good prices - cashew nuts, Al Fakher and other brands of tobacco, alcohol, jewelry and toys.

Clear blue skies above Qatar

Yummy in-flight meal! I love this!

Arriving to Delhi, fasten seatbelts!

We spent a couple of hours in Delhi waiting for the flights to Varanasi, which start departing around 10 am. Not that we could find any convenient place to rest inside the Delhi International airport, but it was quiet and clean, so we just settled in one of its comfortable cafes and whiled away the hours there. Actually, there is a launge to sleep in, but they charge ridiculously high - USD 100 for 3 hours of sleep. If you are on a budget and need a nap, just check in into your flight and pass all the security checks to find a spare and nice looking horizontal chairs, where you can surrender to sleep. Though I would not recommend doing that if there is no one to wake you up for the flight :) 

On a flight to Varanasi

Hello, Varanasi!

Wait, it's a strangely familiar logo, this can't be real!

Checking in the Temple on Ganges hotel on Assi ghat

Our first thali in Varanasi. Crunching papad

Are you ready for street painting in the sacred city?

To be continued...


We would like to thank again our partners, Qatar Airways, and Moscow based Indian travel agency IMS-Service, and personally Inderaj for bringing us to India for this art project.

Dasashwamedh Station, Varanasi

So we have finally accomplished our first wall here. We hope it will serve as a prominent landmark for Russian tourists in Varanasi - the text in Russian above the painting says "Station Dasashwamedh" and has a direct correlation with the big M which stands both for Moscow and for Moscow subway.

Not only the Moscow sub­way sym­bol looks as if it belongs in Varanasi. Artyom also looks more and more like a devoted pil­grim here )

Geography of Varanasi

As for the physical geography of Varanasi,

Varanasi is located on the Western bank of the Ganges river in Northern India. The Indian state is Uttar Pradesh. In Varanasi the sacred Ganges makes a moon-like turn and flows to the North, while usually most rivers in northern hemisphere are destined South.

If we count from Delhi, Varanasi is 780 km to the South-East of the capital.

If you drive a car, or rather, hire a driver, the road to Varanasi will take more than 16 hours. You will have to ride creepy Indian roads, which are unlit at night and remain in dire condition for the last 50 years. As one school of Indian driving puts it, local "roads" are not meant to commute from here to there, it’s the road themselves that run from here to there.

You can also take some time to enjoy the countryside and hire an auto rickshaw, this is one of the most extraordinary ways to travel – it will take you a couple of days. I personally have not heard of any foreigner, who found the courage to make such a journey.

The most common way to get to Varanasi is taking a train (13 to 17 hour-long trip) or book air tickets (1.5 hours flight). The train tickets cost around Rs1 000 ($ 25), flight – from Rs 2 000 to Rs 10 000 ($46-250) depending on the season and the time of booking. The cheapest tickets are booked about 2 months before the flight.

After you have landed in Varanasi, you will need a taxi to reach the city – the price tag is around Rs 550 ($13). The ride will take about 1.5 hours depending on traffic situation, which is totally unpredictable.

As for the mystical geography of the city,

Varanasi is considered to be the center of space and time, located above the Earth. The locals believe that the city rests on the Shiva’s trident, between Heaven and Earth.

The common belief is that it’s not very easy to reach the city. The molecules of your destiny would tuck in such a way that would hinder your trip plans. But at the same time whenever you decide to come to Varanasi, the sheer determination to accomplish that makes your karma a bit better. And it will drastically improve onwards should you enter the city, see the Ganges and bathe in it.

And if you have come to Varanasi for however a short trip, you will probably tilt towards visiting it again and again. One of the names of the city is Avimukta – a never forsaken city, maybe that is the reason why a lot of people do come back.