"If I could fuck a mountain..."

Egged on by my own contemplative mood and drained now by the streets of cow shit and drug dealers I am moving on.

Varanasi gives so much power but what it gives with one hand it tickles away with the other. It gives so much it makes you crazy and then crazy becomes tiresome and all you want is to breathe some real air and understand what silence is.

All around here is music. Music shops play cds, instrument shops give sitar and tabla lessons, and you hear the sound of a constant stream of hard-working musicians practicing their own passion from their guesthouse room. Even the internet shop I write this in blasts the hypnotic sound of a loud generator to combat the perpetual powercuts of this old city.

Each day and night I hear the vocal prayers of nearby mosques calling their people to worship. One mosque begins to broadcast its nullifying vocal chant and then another mosque broadcasts its own version until a handful of mosques are calling simultaneously and the airwaves above the city are howling like a pack of angry ghosts. At four am, as I try to sleep alone in the unbearable heat of the night, with no power to turn the fan to help create a false sense of cooling; and with three windows open in my third storey room, bringing me closer to the confusing cacophony I feel awake in a nightmare. Sweating and exhausted from the day, I hear myself mutter, with an ironic smile: “fucking muslims” and I begin to understand how wars start.

So I feel like having an adventure alone. Tomorrow I take a train to Bareilly, arriving at some time in the early hours of the morning and from this point onwards I face a whole bunch of local buses to get to Almora.

Maybe in Almora I can escape the constancy of tourist socializing. I’ve come to accept that I can befriend just about anyone travelling in India – but I am starting to realise that it simply isn’t necessary and besides, it only really creates confusions and problems. Knowing too many people is actually kind of annoying. I have to really fight to be alone.

So I will depart with love for Varanasi and all those I have met here. But I will be glad to say goodbye and go climb a mountain. That, in case any of you were wondering, is what life is really about.