If I talk to much about Varanasi (or I remember some of its highlights) I'll probably become too depressed. It's not all bad but, for some reason, it was just interesting (not in the sense that you cannot be impolite and say it was terrible but you cannot lie as much as to say it's nice, no; in the sense that it was, actually, interesting) but always leaving me with a bad aftertaste.
One of the days I went 10 km away to Sarnath, the place where Buddha held his first teaching in front of his first five disciples. The place is literally overpopulated with Buddhist temples, as people from all countries decided to build their own traditional type of Buddhist monastery. Therefore, you can have your choice as to which Buddhist temple you might like to see: could it be the Thai temple or the Burmese one? Maybe the Chinese or Sri Lankan or the Tibetan? Or simply visit all (if you have the willpower and patience) after you've visited the museum, the main stupa and the place where it's said that Buddha publicly talked for the first time. Yes, it's hard work and there's nothing else to do there anyway but it's everything Varanasi is not: quiet, small, fairly clean.
Also, they have a deer park, where you can see a lot of deer beyond the wire fences, which means that you'll basically see small pieces of deer through the meshwork. But you can also see this:
...which for me, was really something. I should have been more impressed by the magnificent, spiritually charged temples and sacred places, but what really got to me were the crocodiles!
Back to Varanasi, everything was back to Indian normality, even more so, as everybody prepared for Diwali, one of the biggest celebrations in India, a candle festival with lots of fireworks and firecrackers everywhere, so much so that you could effectively go deaf just by walking by the ghats. Cars, cycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, bicycles, people... everything you'd possibly imagine were roaming the streets that day. So the only reasonable thing to do was to retreat at my usual cafe and finally have a hookah, sheesha, arghile, qalyān, or simply, a waterpipe. It was disappointingly light but still delicious. And then it all started!
Diwali is something like a Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve combined: it's a family affair, usually celebrated within the family, around a dinner table and some strong liquor after the normal temple prayers, but, at some point, the whole family will go outside and start lighting countless fireworks to the delight of everyone involved. And they will keep this up all night and the next day or simply as long as they still have a stash of fireworks left. The 'rockets' and 'bombs' are the teenagers' favorites, as they explode louder than anything else temporary disabling all animal presence on a radius of several kilometers (which, of course, means the monkeys as well, so there is an upside to this!). But first of all there's the candles, which you can see at every house and even in guesthouses. They even lit a small candle in front of my door, which was out by the time I got back.
The cafe had its own little celebration, lighting candles in the form of the Ohm symbol, fussing around it for more than an hour and being overly pleased with the result.
And then, this is Varanasi by day:
It was finally time to leave Varanasi and I was nothing less than happy to be heading out, although I was in for another overnight 12 hour train ride, which, incidentally, was also 3 hours late arriving in Kolkata. Well, all in all, 15 hours is not as bad as it might have been. Getting to Kolkata, I still had half a day to look around, which I much intended but the idea of moving around with my backpack was not at all that appealing. Still, I dragged the backpack with me at the only place that had been warmly recommended, namely the Victoria Memorial Hall, a massive, somewhat impressive museum where the biggest surprise was they had no cloak rooms or lockers whatsoever. Looking at exhibits with a 10 kilo backpack strapped onto your shoulders is entirely unpleasant, I can knowingly state! So I cut my visit short and headed for the airport.
Incredible (insane) India, we shall meet again!
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