City Hiking...The Indian "Sidewalk" Experience

   Moving along sidewalks is more like hiking than walking.  You must be continually vigilant to avoid the weaving cars, bikes, rickshaws, horse drawn vehicles, camel drawn vehicles, ox drawn vehicles, autorickshaws, and trucks which treat you more like a cone on an obstacle course to avoid than a moving and breathing fragile being.  Then, to avoid twisting your ankle, you must avoid the missing bricks, the missing stones that lead to underground wiring, the people fixing the missing bricks, the girl painting the cracks between the bricks red even in the rain (yeah, this one was very confusing), the men serving soup out of small thermoses to hungry market goers, the goats, memory stick hawkers, the monkeys, and the cows.  Oh, and if it's raining, gd forbid that you step in and deep and murky puddle...who knows whether it is rain water (more men pee on walls here then I have ever seen in urinals).

  Often, our guides felt less like information givers, and more like protectors as they keep a sharp eye on both the bulls and aggressive monkeys that we try to avoid on the 4 feet wide paths of the old city of Varanasi.  Walking is an adventurous experience that is not for the faint of heart :)