At the Varanasi Hotel, we

At the Varanasi Hotel, we were greeted, as we had come to expect, with warm hospitality, attractive rooms and excellent food. After lunch, into our bus again (now only one. of course) for a sightseeing tour of the city. We were taken first to the Durga Temple, built in the eighteenth century by a distant benefactor to replace one of the many Hindu temples destroyed in a fit of fanatical zeal by the last effective Mogul emperor (the same who frustrated his father’s hope of building himself a mausoleum to match the Taj Mahal). Hindu religious architecture of relatively recent vintage seemed to my western eye to lack both the aesthetic charm and the spiritual appeal of Islamic mosque or Christian church (always excepting, of course, churches of similar age). Apart from its rundown environment, that particular temple is memorable mainly for the horde of mischievous monkeys that tormented visitors. From thence we went on to Banaras Hindu University, with its imposing campus and splendid art museum.

Then our bus put us down in the heart of the city to make our way on foot to the Vishwanath Temple and the Gyanvapi mosque with its bulbous golden dome, facing each other across a narrow passage. In that quarter, as we threaded our way, with swarms of other pedestrians, through winding alleys lined with little openfronted shops of every description, we felt ourselves to be really in the heart of an Indian city. Once ag^in.T on the, upward trip, I was hard put to keep up with