Chillin' on the Ganges

Hello again!
Apologies again for the delays in updating blogs- especially for those of you who get maddy's blog as well and can tell that i am very slack with these things!

Last time i wrote we were in Pushkar, I think. We had a camel ride out into the desert at sunset, which was amazing. My camel was like a ferrari, we were so fast! hehehe. Kind of freaked out when i was getting up (helpful hint: when the man says "lean back" he means lie flat on your back on the camel! I just leant a little bit, and almost fell off!) It was pretty amazing being in this deserted little spot in the desert, and then all of a sudden hot cups of chai and little indian sweets arriving! We travelled back to Delhi in sleeper class on the train, which is the lower class and is unrestricted seating, and so had a family of ten squich into our little booth! We had a great chat with them (via a translator!) and they even got all dressed up and put on makeup for a photo with us- so friendly, can't imagine people doing that at melbourne central somehow!

We are in Varanasi at the moment, having arrived here on the 8th January from Delhi, and really enjoying it here. For those of you who don't know, Varanasi is one of the holiest cities in India, running along side the Ganges River. It is said to be the oldest inhabited city in the entire world, and you can definitely believe it! The old city, where we are staying, is a labrinyth of cobbled streets, old buildings and temples every few metres. It's a great place just to wander around and explore.

But i guess the main attraction of Varanasi is the ghats that line the river, and on which people pray, wash, wash their clothes, shave, get a haircut, tooth extraction, massage... everything you can imagine! We have been ultra careful not to fall into the water though, and the reason for this is that the Ganges contains all the raw sewarage of the surrounding villages and cities. This is made even worse when you consider that the catchment area of the river contains 8.5% of the worlds population (ie. 1 in 12 people live in this area) and so over 1 billion litres of untreated raw sewerage enters the river every day.. pretty scary stuff. Andrew had the pleasure of being splashed with some water off a boat oar this morning, and don't think he enjoyed it!

The ghats are also where the open air cremations take place, which is really confronting, yet peaceful in a weird sort of way. It is said that if a Hindu is cremated in Varanasi, their soul escapes the cycles of reincarnation and proceeds directly to nirvana, and so there are constant cremations here- 24 hours a day. The bodies are brought down to the river in silk, doused in the holy waters and then cremated on pyres of wood (if the families can afford it, they use sandalwood, but some of the families are so poor that they can not even afford enough wood to fully cremate the body.) Leftover bones and ashes are sent down the Ganges, as are the whole bodies of children and pregnant women. It was strange watching the cremations- i thought i would be really freaked out, and while it wasn't nice to see burning bodies (especially the feet poking out), the families are so calm, and the setting is peaceful, and i just didn't feel the sadness i thought i would. Life on the ghats certainly doesn't pause during a cremation... women are still washing their clothes, men are playing cards and boys are flying kites all within 10 metres of the bodies.

We really enjoyed walking along the ghats, but the beggars and touts do get very tiring here! We can not take more than 5 steps without someone trying to sell us something, but i can definitely understand why they do it. Maddy and I bought our saris for Jay's wedding yesterday, and are very excited about wearing them. Our other excitement for the week is that we have found a coffee shop in Varanasi (for those travelling, its called Open Hand Cafe, Assi Ghat!) which has real coffee, rolls and cakes!

And yesterday was my birthday- yay! We had a lovely day, just taking it easy and relaxing! Had an aruyvedic massage in the afternoon and a great dinner (although i almost died from eating an entire chilli- i thought it was a bean, oops!). We are leaving Varanasi tonight for the hill station of Darjeeling (right near the Himalayas, so fingers crossed it is clear enough to get a view of Everest).

Hope all is well at home, missing you all. We hear Lara Bingle is a hussy- isn't it great the news of Australia that makes it overseas!

xxx

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