Varanasi (15-17APR)

Varanasi was one of the oldest, holiest and dirtiest cities on the tour. With all these -ests, it is easy to understand why people tend to have strong opinions about the town. Many people love it and consider it a highlight of their tour, while others hate it, like my guide who would not visit the city if he wasn't forced to with a tour. I found the ghats along the river with their religious and social significance quite interesting and picturesque in the morning sun, but would not visit the town for many other reasons.

On our first day in town, we took a walk down the ghats from from the edge of town, where our hotel was, to the center. There are 98 ghats in all but they really all run together to form one long set of stairs, or bleachers, along the river bank. It was high noon when we started our walk and the heat was intense, however it was the stew that was being brewed in the river that caught my attention. We were walking down stream, so each new event/ingredient just added to the next. The first ingredient was sewage. Unfortunately, the sewage outlet had been placed just up stream from the city water treatment intake point... not real solid urban planning. Next we had people doing their laundry, adding a little soap to the stew, which was probably appreciated by the cows that were bathing a little further down. Actually, they were probably just trying to escape the afternoon heat, but they were also another ingredient. After the cows, there were a few more sewage drainage points, some of which were so fowl you could taste the stench in the air. Then we passed the burning ghats where the ashes of the faithful were being washed into the river. Finally, after all of these ingredients were added, we came to a ghat where the locals were bathing and swimming in this stew of ewe. In the morning, one of the bathers invited us to join them, saying you only live once, but I think that stew could make that one life a little uncomfortable with dysentery or worse.

At sunset, we set out on a medium sized row boat for a candle ceremony on the boat, followed by the flower ceremony on the shore. As the sun set our oarsman began to light candles in over 100 bowls made of banana leaves. We then set them a float in the river carrying wishes for us and our loved ones. By the time they were all on the river, they made the river glow like a second city skyline. After all of the candles had floated down stream in the slow river, we move toward the central ghat where a large crowd had formed to watch or participate in the flower ceremony. The ceremony is held every evening and involved five Brahmans conducting a series of ritual offerings in unison with flowers, flames and bells accompanied by lots of other bells, a couple drums, and oversaw by a local guru. We watched the ceremony for about 15 minutes and then moved back up the river to find dinner.

In the morning, we got up at 4:30 to head back out on the river for sunrise and to watch the city wake up. The crowd along the ghats grew quickly as did the crowd on the river as boats filled with other tourist and locals began their morning. There were smaller morning ceremonies taking place, bodies being prepared for cremation, crowds of locals doing their laundry to beat the heat of the day, and larger crowds of locals, and a few brave/crazy tourists, swimming and bathing. The sunrise was beautiful, casting an orange glow on the city as it tried to burn off the morning mist that cloaked the river bank.

While we were in Varanasi there were local elections, which kept us off the streets for the rest of the day, and the whole town seemed asleep until about five in the evening. After the election day lull, everyone was keen to go to Saranth, the following day, which is the site of Buddha's first sermon. The taxi ride was grueling, as usual, with every driver maneuvering for himself and only giving way at the last moment if necessary. Even the few police that were trying to establish order at round-abouts were being ignored until they stood directly in front of the traffic. When we arrived in Saranth, we found out that the museum was closed that day and ended up with a local guide that had some good information, but seemed to repeat everything three times for emphasis, or to simply make his short tour longer. In Deer Park, there is a large stupa at the site of Buddha's first sermon, which had been destroyed by conquering moghuls who believed it housed treasures of the Buddhist religion. It has been rebuilt, but the damage is still evident. Also in the town were multiple monasteries/temples built by the various countries that have large Buddhist followings. Our guide recommended going to only one, saying they all charged an entrance fee, but it appeared this was more of a ruse to keep us from going to all of them and keeping him from guiding another group... or he may have been working for our taxi drivers to get us back on the road to Varanasi as soon as possible. At any rate, the Tibetan temple we did visit was free and was an impressive and colorful structure. You could see the Asian influences in the building's design, statues of other gods on the grounds, the two lions guarding the entrance and dragons wrapped around the pillars on either side of the main Buddha statue inside. It was an impressive temple, and I would have liked to see some of the other country's temples as well. Instead, we loaded back in our taxis and returned to Varanasi to prepare for our 17 hours night train journey to Kolkata.