I don’t get up for the boat ride and am a little miffed not to have been woken up for it. This may have been due to the fact that the others had seen me drinking the previous night though.
I don’t mind too much, as I spend the day relaxing by the pool away from the chaos outside.
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| Ganges @ Varanasi (picture from Laurie, as I wasn't there...) |
When the others get back, I go on a post office hunt with Laurie. The Post Office is only a ten minute walk away, although it does involve the dangerous activity of crossing the road several times. I am helped in this task at a roundabout due to a number of cows causing a traffic stand still there, although the tuk tuk drivers never stay completely still. It also helps us get away from the rickshaw driver who has been following us down the road since we left the hotel.
The counter service is in a large room with several booths and wholly unpopulated by any other customers. I do not have any packaging, but I have learned that they do the packaging for you for a small fee in most post offices in Asia. Here, however, they direct me outside to find a man under a tree.
The only man under a tree I see though is one who appears to be preparing a local stimulant. I ask him if he is the man who does the packaging and he nods in that Indian way that is neither yay nor nay, but he asks me to wait for a moment. He re-appears carrying postage customs forms. He sews my package into a sack he has acquired and seals it with wax stamps. He then escorts me not to the counter, but to a shed at the side of the post office. It is here that all the business seems to happen, as this shed is crammed with packages and files.
Posting from India is not particularly cheap. At first, I am told I can post my package by sea for £12. I don’t have enough cash and credit cards are not widely accepted here, so I go to an ATM to get extra cash. When I return, I am told that there is no boat service to the UK from here after all, so I pay £20 for air service (which still takes up to five weeks). Considering the contents, it hardly seems worth sending. I am then escorted by the packaging man upstairs to the sorting office where I get a stamp on my receipt. It’s not a particularly efficient operation, but is certainly the most memorable visit to a post office I have yet had. The point of the large and empty counter service room inside is not entirely clear.
In the evening, I eat at the hotel restaurant with Dave, Meg, Gaz and Rhiannon. It’s a smart looking restaurant serving a lot of western dishes and I take the opportunity to wear my Punjab suit. However, I am not in a good mood, and stomp off at the end of the meal tossing some change towards Meg to make up the balance of the bill, annoyed because I had paid for her and Dave’s breakfast a couple days previously.
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