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Day 7:
Thursday 5th December
Chunar
& Fort; corpses by campsite.
06:30 is 'bed tea' time, where you are gently roused from sleep by the guys and/or Clare and given tea or coffee at the door of your tent. Soon after a bowl of hot water arrives for washing with.
Breakfast - I'm able to eat again! - and we depart leaving nigh on no marks on the riverside. The leisurely cruise takes its toll and the 3 girls are asleep as I write this. Pontoon bridges, people bathing, washing, playing, and waving as we roll along (courtesy of our two rowers - there's just no wind at all).
  Just before lunch, Jo and I take the oars, as do Kirby and Graham on another boat, and we splash and thrash nowhere in particular. Fun Chok joins us on our boat at lunch; at a stop-off on the side one of the boatmen entertain those of us not interested in the toilet stop with handstand walking.
 Mid-afternoon (2pm) we visit
Chunar Fort. It was surrounded by a rural village (i.e. no beggars!). The English
cemetery is now used as a cow-pat oven. The fort is at the top of a hill beside a pontoon bridge and includes lots of dungeons and jails, funnily enough.
   
 We exit down the hill via a Pepsi shop - no diet, though, so I drink the one I bought in Bahrain! Back onto the boats for some sailing (or, rather, rowing) until 4:30pm, when we camp on a flat, sandy bend of the Ganges.
Phrase for Today: "I appear to have over-inflated my snake".
A
reconnaissance of the area digs up (you might say) a corpse of a woman upstream, and a man, cow, dog/donkey(?) and the French downstream.
 As night falls, we realise we're not alone... there are dogs scouting round us (you can see their eyes reflected in our torches). With the gin flowing, a stereo is set up with wobbly tapes playing wobbly Punjabi music - the native dancing on 2 mats consists of jumping up and down rapidly, although some people try to retaliate with salsa lessons...! Madonna briefly Dies Another Day from a little stereo in a bucket after the ghetto blaster chews its last - until later resurrected and jumping en masse resumes. I get an Indian head massage from Gill, and although content for the night where I am, eventually I sidle off to bed.
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