Like a warm blanket.

Arriving in Darjeeling, the fog is so thick that holding your hand out a moving jeep or train window feels the sensation of raindrops. Despite the 27 degree drop in temperature from Bodh Gaya, I feel like I'm wrapped in a warm blanket.

The day we left Varanasi, the sky was grey and the air cool. It smelled damp - unexpectedly, since it's months until the monsoon season. Catching a morning train to the neighboring town of Sarnath, where Buddah gave his first sermon, I realize how eager I am for quieter places. Varanasi (as described by others) really is the best and worst of India mixed into one. Undoubtedly, it is the most intense place I have ever been. Nowhere does life and death visibly thrive next to each other in this way. Nowhere else can touts be so notoriously pushy. (Well, that's not true - they've been just as pushy elsewhere. But, after sitting quietly in one of Hinduism's holiest places, they seem to be all the more obnoxious.) From Varanasi's tourist and Hindu pilgrim crowd to Sarnath's streets and monasteries, there is a definite change of pace. With Buddhist pilgrims from all over Asia, monks take the place of sadhus, the sound of evening pujas replaced with the chanting of Buddha's first sermon - hundreds of pilgrims joining. The grey skies waited just long enough for most people to be out of the streets before they let out enough rain to flood them within minutes. Standing on the covered balcony of the restaurant I am in, I didn't realize how much I'd missed the rain.