Varanasi

Apart from being a great place to hang out for a few days one of the advantages of being in Rishikesh was the abundance of other travelers in town making it easy to get tips and info on trains, buses, and hotel and restaurant recommendations.

Looking at the map of India my 3 previous visits have enabled me to see quite a bit of the country but there were some gaping 'holes' in my travels, the most noticeable of which was Varanasi.

Listed as one of India's oldest cities and an 'must see' in every guide book I'd never got around to working it into my itinerary for a number of reasons; it's in a region i've not visited or transited through and i'd heard some horror stories about how filthy it was and the constant hassle some travelers had experienced there. There was no doubt however that at some point i'd have to work it into my schedule, and that time had come. First though I had to get out of Rishikesh, and with a festival happening further down the road in Haridwar all trains out of town were booked solid. Two days later I climbed aboard the night train to Varanasi and settled down for the 20-hour journey.

I was traveling 3rd class sleeper which is about the lowest class you can take and involves sharing a compartment with seven other people. This is how I met Anu and her family who where making the trip to Varanasi to see a famous swami (holy man) speak.



Anu was bright, confident and spoke pretty good English so the time passed quickly as we played games, drew pictures and her parents quizzed me with Anu acting as the translator. The family bore all the traits of a middle class India family; the father and uncle were dressed in Western clothes, both had mobile phones and the Auntie, like so many other affluent Indians these days, was horribly obese; not surprising as she ate constantly throughout the journey.

I arrived in Varanasi after dark and took a rickshaw as close to the hotel i'd chose as possible, but with the streets of the old town becoming too narrow the final 200 metres had to be made on foot so I jumped down and followed the driver on foot.
From this point on I felt like Alice having fallen down the rabbit hole, snaking through the streets, twisting and turning left and right, having to squash past the occasional cow and tread gently not to trip over a sleeping dog. At times we'd pop out into a well lit bazaar, only to dive down another dark alley which finally led us to the guest house someone had scribbled the name of in my notebook. After checking in and taking a much needed shower I headed up to the rooftop restaurant and caught my first sight on the Ganga and town. The view was serene with the moonlight flickering off the river and small row boats appearing, then slipping away from view through the mist. With the absence of traffic and horns my first impression of Varanasi was bewitching.



So why does everyone come to Varanasi?
Consisting of more than 85 ghats (stone steps down to the river) in just a couple of hundred metres it's a great place to people watch and see life played out before you. Bathing, puja, a game of cricket, washing cows, meeting friends and of course, death, as Varanasi is the place to die and be cremated if you want to give your soul a chance of a better deal in your next life.
Being in Varanasi and not witnessing death is impossible with more than 350 cremations a day at the main ghat. Wondering the narrow streets you're often forced to squash to one-side as another body is carried down to the ghats on a bamboo stretchers, some wrapped in cloth and silks, others not.

The stretchers are carried by four male family members and when they arrive at the river the body is submerged then carried back up to the cremation ghat. Here the family buys 450kg of wood, sandalwood being the most expensive, required to burn the body and the pyre is built.
The body is then placed on top, more wood is stacked on, leaving the head uncovered and the oldest male, having shaved his head and dressed in a simple white robe walks around the pyre four times, followed by the 3 other members and a holy man, scattering sawdust and some kind of powdered fire starter as they go. As the fourth pass is completed the holy man thrusts a burning log beneath the feet and the flames spread quickly to consume the body. The women stand and watch from the steps above and whilst the ceremony is fascinating to watch it's painful to do so with their grief and pain so close and I quickly found myself avoiding the cremation ghats for this reason.
It takes about 3.5 hours for the body to be burn't at which point the oldest son fills an earthenware pot with water from the Ganges and throws it backwards over his head to extinguish the flames. The Ashes are swept into another pot whilst everything that was not consumed by the fire is swept down the bank where its first picked through by cows before being panned through by men of the lowest possible cast seeking gold teeth, bracelets and anything else of value. Needless to say the body is not always entirely burnt and it's best not to look to closely at what they're sifting through.

There are 5 types of bodies that cannot be burnt and receive a slightly different treatment.
Those that have died from cobra bites are placed on small bamboo rafts and floated downstream so the poison can seep slowly into the river. Children under the age of 5, pregnant women, along with holy men and smallpox victims are wrapped in cloth, have heavy stones attached and are sunk out in the middle of the river. I'd spent a good 5 minutes sat by the river until I realised the rock i'd seen earlier was moving downstream and as it turned in the current was obviously the head and shoulders of a body of an adult that had bobbed back up to the surface.

With it's labyrinth of narrow streets knee deep in rubbish and shit, and it's river a soup of effluent and corpses it was clear why Varanasi had the reputation of one of the filthiest cities in India, but as I'd come expecting the worst it failed to shock me and my initial impression of it being a bewitching city remains.