Varanasi + another long train ride

So Varanasi isn't really my favourite place. It is incredibly humid and it's is saaaaa dirty! The place has even more of a rubbish problem than what I've seen of the rest of India; in the old city where I stayed there seems to be zero cooperation in rubbish dumping, it's just dump on the street outside your home. There also seemed to be a lot of very sick or dead dogs, which wasn't very pleasant.
Found a travel buddy who is from Rocky of all places and ironically he's currently living in Melbourne. We took a dawn boat ride on the Ganges which I think is the highlight of my time in Varanasi. For a country that values privacy I sure saw a lot genitalia as people quickly changed after their 'wash' in the Ganges. Was kinda my fault for taking a boat ride in front of the bathing ghats. The burning ghats didn't really phase me after the cremation I saw in Bali. There's 6 types of bodies that can't be cremated and are instead thrown in the middle of the river tied to a rock: children, pregnant women, lepers, victims of cobra bite, sadhus (holy men), and animals. Sometimes, however, as I saw, the bodies become free of their rocks and float down the river. The body I saw was still wrapped up, but another couple of girls I spoke to saw a dead baby float by whilst they were taking their boat ride. Chaaaaarming.
Monday morning I went to the train station at 8am to catch my next train to Haridwar which was supposed to leave at 8:20am. I usually would have gotten to the station earlier but the hotel took about half an hour to bring out my breakfast. Looked at the big screen at the train station... my train number didn't appear to be on it so I had no idea what platform I was supposed to be on. Walked closer to the platforms to find another screen but there wasn't one. Went up to a guy at a booking counter to ask if he could tell me which platform I needed to wait at, and despite me saying "excuse me" about 5 times and explaining that I just needed to ask him a quick question and that I would miss my train otherwise, he just kept ignoring and ignoring me and typing into his computer. Prick. I started getting frantic then and asking random nice-ish looking people if they knew where I needed to go and eventually I was told Platform 9. I heard announcements saying that the train on Platform 9 was ready to depart and so I ran there, showed my ticket to a guy with some sort of seat list who told me I needed to be on the 'A1' coach, and jumped on. Got settled in and started talking to a fellow passenger, relieved that I was on my train finally! Ended up sitting at the station for another half an hour. Then a ticket inspector came to check off the tickets against his list and he told me that I was not on the right train. WHAT?!? That train went to Haridwar as well, but it was apparently not my train. Got frantic, explaining that I had been told this was my train and even the guy with the list outside told me this was my train, and that if this ISN'T my train then how the hell do I find MY train?!?! So I had to get off the train. I had no idea how I was going to find my train and fearing that I had missed it while I was sitting in my fake train. "Bugger this" I thought and went to the tourist ticket booking office.. I knew they spoke English and would know what the hell was happening. Turns out my train was delayed. I was told to sit down in their office (airconditioned, thank god) and listen for an announcement (which are almost impossible to understand). After a while they also got a Tourist Police guy to come in and look at my ticket and go and get information about my train for me. Apparently there were issues with the train tracks and the train was delayed 1 hour. In a few minutes he came back, delay now 1.5 hours. Then for some reason the same booking guy who had told me to wait in his office decided to get up and yell at me in front of everyone, telling me that this wasn't a waiting room and that I need to get up and be checking on my train. I tried to tell him that not 10min prior the tourist police guy had come in and told me it would be another half an hour, but he wouldn't let me speak and instead told me to listen to him. *sigh*
So then every few minutes I would go and re-ask the tourist police guy about the train.. and in turn he would get exasperated at me continuously coming and asking, telling me that he would come and tell me when there had been an announcement.
Next announcement, train had been delayed 2.5 hours. 3 hours passed and no further announcement. 3.5 hours.. no announcement. 4 hours and finally an announcement.. the train was at the station before Varanasi and would be here in 10, 15, 20min. After 30min the train FINALLY arrived. Thank. God.
I had shelled out extra for a 2AC ticket because there were no other tickets available, and I was really really glad about it when I got on the train to airconditioned comfort and an employee handed me a pile of fresh sheets, towel and blanket in a packet. Ahhh comfort.
Halfway through the journey my cabin buddies departed and were replaced by an Indian woman who worked in the army and kindly (and forcefully) shared her bought dinner with me, which was actually delicious. Slept really well and we arrived in Haridwar at 5am (scheduled time was 11:05pm). It was actually beneficial because it was so late that instead of checking into a hotel room and sleeping, I just jumped on a local bus to Rishikesh and kept on going. Saved me the cost of a hotel room!
On the bus I had a little Indian girl next to me who curled up and slept on the chair next to me. Her mother, who was sitting across the aisle, and I had to keep our hands on her so that she wouldn't bounce off the seat. Halfway through she changed positions and fell asleep on my lap instead. Very cute.
It is so lovely and temperate here compared to the sweltering humidity of Varanasi. The breeze at dawn on the bus was actually freezing cold but now it's just a nice bearable temperature.
I'm staying in an ashram to do some yoga for my last couple of days in India. So far I'm not really that into it. There's a lot of people here all hyped up on serious spirituality and I just really can't get to that 'place'. Just way too 'lighthearted' to be bothered getting into that all right now. I'm not on a "my marriage fell apart and now I'm going to Italy, India and Bali to find myself" tour.. I'm not sad.. I'm perfectly content just doing my own thing. So I'll do some yoga and go... obla di obla da... :)