Varanasi

Do you know what 30 hours of riding a train on an upper bed with dozens of Indians scattered all around the floor around you and on all available spots, with children, bags, containers, food, cell phones and anything else imaginable feels like? Well, I don’t. because I slept most of the journey, enjoying my upper berth privacy and some iPhone music, trying to look friendly yet unapproachable (so as to discourage theft and communication respectively), but mostly succeeding to look sleepy and detached. The good part was that there were two nights of the journey, and Indian nights (implying sleep) start sometime around 8 PM, and the day in between somehow went by really fast. Were there any bad parts, you ask. Well, not counting the scarce meals, the bad bathrooms, the complicated way to move around and not stomp on some forgotten child or bag, and, by the end, the lack of water for the toilets and sinks, no there were no bad parts whatsoever. And, by the time I got to Varanasi, most was forgotten, as Varanasi itself presented me with too much to process.

New question: did you, by now, get the impression that India is a (very) dirty and (very) crowded place, somewhat primitive and underdeveloped? Well, that is all like slapping someone with a feather, compared to Varanasi.

And did you think Indian habits, whether sacred or profane, were a tad ridiculous or destitute? Well, Varanasi takes that to a whole new level because it has an ace in its sleeve: the all-too holy Ganges River. Which, thanks to its sacred character, can wash away dirt, sins and cremation ashes, all in one flow.

I arrived in the morning and was persuaded by a fairly nice rickshaw driver to be taken to the city in some guesthouse, as I had no idea where to go (this was just after I had ripped my ‘Lonely Plan’ to pieces so I didn’t have to carry the whole book around and, even though I had my Varanasi pages with me, I stubbornly refused to use them). After three open-guesthouse views, I returned to option number one, a worn out dusty place, with very small rooms but with a nice view over the Ganges, even from my room, close to the Burning Ghat (keep this in mind for later). And, although it was not the best choice (guesthouse and city), I decided right then and there to give up my plans of visiting other cities and take a last night train to Kolkata to catch my flight out of India; four nights and almost six full days awaited my attention and a whole labyrinth of a city craved for my observance, which I reluctantly gave, because walking through the alleys of the old city feels just like I imagine a mouse must feel like while running in a man-made maze to get to the cheese. My cheeses were as follows: finding somebody to repair my totally destroyed bad rip-off Teva sandals; find a place to non-tourist priced cigarettes (I honestly can live without the extra 20% spontaneously added tax for a pack of smokes); and finding an internet café, preferably with both internet and coffee, which is quite rare on this side of the globe. Also on my list: escaping the labyrinth and somehow succeeding in returning to the guesthouse.

The first two quests went a lot smoother than I thought but the third one turned out to be simply impossible. Still, I was really happy when I stumbled upon a nice café in the yard of a temple, where the Nepalese waiter was friendly and the only annoyance were the monkeys, who noisily demanded food from the staff (which, obviously, obliged), and shamelessly refused to disperse (when the same staff threatened them at gunpoint, well, at toy-gunpoint which mostly made popping sounds).

And, at some point, I decided to find my way back to the guesthouse but was smart enough to choose the road by the river, past every ghat from the main one to the burning one. Thus, my first encounter with the Burning Ghat. Back home I live close to a cemetery so it wasn’t such a big shock to realize that by ‘burning ghat’ they simply mean cremating steps to the Ganges River, good old-fashioned incinerating; on a pyre; with wood; people covered in white shrouds; brought to the water on wooden stretchers carried by members of the family…

The ‘not taking pictures’ part I perfectly understand (although the reason is not as obvious as you might think; Hindus believe that photo cameras can trap their soul) but the total ban of wireless internet in the area because of something related to the cremations (again a not-being-robbed-of-your-soul kind of thing) is really out of my reach.

The ghat is working round the clock, as any dead body must be cremated within 24 hours of the death and it is a strong Hindu belief that dying in the holy city of Varanasi will spare them the fuss and trouble of reincarnating and they will get salvation. So, at any time of day or night, the Burning Ghat will be in full power, with bodies burning, holy men blessing and praying, families watching, wood dealers selling (it is said that they know the exact amount of wood needed to burn a body), people throwing ashes of burned out pyres into the river. There are categories of Hindus who are not incinerated: babies, pregnant women, sadhus (ascetic wondering monks), and lepers only have their lifeless bodies tied to rocks and are drowned in the river (as well as any dead animals) but – and this I say from personal experience – this is better not to be seen, as sometimes, the bodies get untied from their respective rocks and turn up floating on the river’s surface.

This much I found out while walking home that first night (well, this and the fact that all Varanasi Indians have weed and hash and good times for sale).

Of course, for 50 rupees, I did the early morning sunrise boat ride on the river, having a full hour to be wordlessly amazed by the life on the ghats. At every single ghat tens of Hindus gather to wash themselves or launch flowers and candles on the Ganges, or just pray in, with or next to the water. And all around, in boats or on land, tourists gather like sheep to see the city come to life. Indeed, it was as crowded on the river as on any normal Indian street but I realized that traffic jams on a river are worse than the ones on land, especially if you want to row upstream (I trust nobody imagined engine-propelled boats). Going back to the guesthouse was a lot easier (it was downstream from the main attraction area) and, being fully awake at 9 AM, I decided to go for a city tour with a 76 year old Indian who was supposed to show me around the temples of the old city. At 10.30 he came and took me around, being very helpful, in a taciturn kind of way, but showing me a lot of small, old temples with the inside story as well.

The daily evening celebration at the main ghat is something you must see at least once, although it is not so special once you’ve seen it. It does take place every day and there are innumerable people coming to see the celebrations but, for a westerner, it’s just some guys waving dust mops all over the place.