Today we walked along the ghats in Varanasi. There is so much going on down there, that you could easily spend days there. Today I got swindled into getting an Aruvedic massage right there in the open! All I did was shake his hand because he introduced himself, and next thing I know, I'm sitting on the ground getting felt up by some strange man saying "don't worry, pay as you like". I've heard that one before. It cost me two hundred rupees just to get him to stop. We also saw a man with dancing monkeys. One monkey was dressed up in little clothes and danced, and the other one played the drums! It was really crazy, but kind of felt sad for the monkeys. Maybe we shouldn't have supported that sort of thing. They had really good rhythm though. There is one more thing that I want to talk about, but I don't think cara wants me to. So here it goes... At the train station a few days ago, a man walked up to me and asked if he could clean my ears. I must have looked puzzled, because he pointed to a whole tool bag with long, skinny tools. I said "okay, is it safe?" He said "don't worry, safe." He sat me down on the concrete, and started Digging in my ear with a giant metal Q-tip. We agreed on twenty rupees. He cleaned out most of the right one, (and I mean big chunks) and then tried to sell me a little bottle of "medicine" for five hundred rupees. I told him no I just wanted my ears cleaned. Then he proceeded to put some drops in my ear, and I said "not extra?", and he said "as you like". It was too late. By this time a large group of people had gathered around me because each time the man pulled out a nice big chunk, he showed it around like a little wax trophy. He let the "medicine" sit in my ear for a couple minutes, and after some digging pulled out something that looked like a fat slug from the depths of my right ear. Then he wanted to charge me more for the other ear. At this point, I was done. I didn't want to pay the ridiculous amount that he was asking to dig around in my fragile ear canal with medieval tools and some mystery medicine. Unfortunately, now everything is a little imbalanced, and I feel like my left ear could really use a cleaning.-ashby