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Published: March 13th 2007
Varanasi is one of the strangest places I have ever been to, a piece of living, breathing history that seems strangely unaffected by the modern world that surrounds it and penetrates it. As we discovered on our way into the city, there is not even a proper road in or out that connects the city to the motorway-style bypass, and in many other ways it felt strangely disconnected in both time and space. Life in the old city and along the ghats of the Ganga continues in much the same the same way that it has for centuries, if not millennia.
Also known as Benares, or Kashi (the City of Light), Varanasi is one the oldest cities in India (perhaps 5,000 years old?) and is one of the most sacred places for Hindu devotees around the world. Kashi, the old city, is believed to be the place where the physical and spiritual dimensions meet, which may explain the feeling of otherworldliness. It is also believed that if you die within the limits of Kashi then your soul will escape the cycle of death and re-birth, become purified by the water of Ganga, and attain Nirvana directly. For this reason many
devout Hindu’s and holy men and women come to Varanasi to live out their last days here and be cremated on the banks of the Ganga. It is especially significant to followers of Lord Shiva, as Varanasi is “Shiva’s City” as we were told again and again.
Varanasi is also a place of paradox - it is easily one of the dirtiest and most filthy cities we have been to in India, yet it is the only Indian city we have felt we could stay in for a long time. A lot of this has to do with the Ganga River, which forms a natural barrier to the edge of the city. One bank is an urban jungle; the opposite side is a huge, wide-open expanse of sand, with trees and farmland just visible in the distant haze. The old city is an impenetrable maze of narrow alleyways that keep traffic to a minimum and mean most people move around quietly on foot. It is therefore a much more peaceful city than most, until you leave Kashi that is, when you are thrown back into the usual overcrowded, noisy and hectic, traffic filled roads of any other UP town
or city. It is easy to find a quiet place to sit on the ghats, however, and look out at a natural view, and close to the river there is always a fresh breeze which helps to keep the air clean.
Despite being the holiest Hindu city nearly half the population is Muslim, though during our 3 week stay we never heard the Azan once due to the near constant bell-ringing and chanting from the literally hundreds of Hindu temples within a small radius of any point in the old city. There is obviously some communal tension as the main temple is closed to all non-Hindus, and is surrounded by barricades and fences, which make it look more like some kind of prison than a place of worship.
After our hectic cycle into the city we were up for a good rest and easily spent a few days doing very little other than finding our way around the old city and spending hours sitting on the ghats people watching. The narrow lanes are fairly filthy and so you have to watch where you put your feet, they are also full of cows, dogs, monkeys and some massive bulls
Purification
A family performs ritual bathing in the Gangathat periodically clear the lanes as they grunt and snort past. There are sweet shops everywhere so we were always well stocked with tasty Indian sweets. Silk is the other thing Varanasi is famous for and Erika was all too happy to spend some time shopping for silk scarves and shawls in the amazingly colourful bazaar.
Our hotel was close to Manikarnika Ghat, where funerals are conducted throughout the day and night, every day of the year. It was strange at first to have funeral processions passing us all the time and to be able to see, and often smell, the smoke rising from the funeral pyres down by the river, but we soon get used to this sight every day. Above the cremation ghat huge piles of wood are stacked and weighed out for each body to be burned, the ashes from the fire are then pushed into the river. The bodies of children are allegedly deposited in the river without first being burnt, as their souls are considered to be pure already. Likewise apparently smallpox victims are also not cremated, though I’m not sure what the theory behind that is….
We had heard rumours that the poor
Ganga Puja
This 2 hour long ceremony is made every evening at sunset on the main ghat. are often not fully burned as they cannot afford enough wood etc. and so it is fairly common to see body parts such as charred feet floating around in the river. I reckon this must be some kind of urban myth as thankfully we never saw this, but it is very easy to see the heads and feet of the burning bodies whilst they are being cremated.
The Ganga is considered a Goddess in Hindu philosophy and she has the power to purify everything she touches. People do not wait to die to be purified by Ganga however, and at any time huge numbers of people, family groups and often pilgrims who have travelled a long way to reach Varanasi, are taking ritual baths in the polluted water. Every day tons of untreated sewage is pumped into the river from Varanasi alone, yet surprisingly in places the river looks quite clean and it certainly smells better than the Thames in London or the Clyde in the centre of Glasgow. There is a lot of rubbish in it however, much coming from the puja offerings made to the Goddess. People throw all kinds of things into the river as gifts
to Ganga, receiving a blessing in return. It was quite sad for us to watch otherwise educated people throwing plastic bags full of offerings into the river, but presumably if you believe in the purifying power of Ganga then it must be impossible to defile her?
Varanasi is not only a popular place to die but also to get married. Every day we would see newly wed couples coming to the river to make offerings and have their union blessed by Ganga, with the brides cloaked in amazingly gold embroidered crimson silk shawls and tied to their new husbands, but looking very demur with their new families. There would always be an accompanying band of drummers and musicians and often there would be a traffic-jam of wedding groups trying to get to the ghat.
At any time there are always a handful of ash covered Sadhu’s to be found on the ghats, but when we arrived there were hundreds of these holy men arriving by the day, having come from nearby Allahabad and the Ard Kumbh, to reach Varanasi in time for Lord Shiva’s wedding night, or Shiva Ratri. They set themselves up in tented camps along the
ghats or on the large sandbank on the opposite riverbank. One day we watched a procession of these Sadhu’s arrive, flanked by armed uniformed police. It as quite bizarre to see the police walking alongside a group of totally naked, ash-covered men who carry swords and swing huge sticks around their deadlocked heads. These Naga-Sadhu’s were followed by an elephant and then a long line of robed Sadhu’s riding in silver, horse-drawn carriages.
The scene with the Sadhu’s by the ghats was quite strange, they sit in groups and are very keen to invite foreign tourists to join them, especially if you are female and attractive it seems. Whilst I’m sure some of them are genuinely spiritual holy men, it did seem that there was a lot of ‘fake babas’ around who were more interested in making friends with foreign women, or receiving donations of money or charas then actually passing on any wisdom. Some of them have a good line in posing for photos whilst twisting their penis around a sword. This looks pretty impressive but when I sat with a guy who did this I realised that his sword was not only extremely blunt but he was
pretty good at fooling you into thinking he had made many more twists than he actually had. Still, fair play, I wouldn’t fancy earning a living doing this kind of thing. What really surprised me was seeing that some of the tarpaulin shelters in the Sadhu camp had electricity run into them, not just to provide lighting at night but so they could sit and watch TV and VCDs!! I also saw so-called baba’s in town riding on rickshaws and counting huge wads of rupee notes, whilst talking on their fancy mobiles. Many of the tourists seemed completely taken in by it all however.
We spent a lot time just relaxing doing very little. Even though we had not planned a long stop here, as we had to reach Calcutta to collect some parcels, we were in no hurry to leave. In fact Varanasi is such a strange and powerful place we found ourselves unable to really even think about leaving. After the first few hot sunny days the weather changed and it became very cloudy and misty, so that from the ghats or the roof of the hotel it was only just possible to see the sandbank across
Shiva City
Shiva Lingums on the ghat. The Lingum is used to worship Lord Shiva and symoblises his immense powers of creation (it is his penis....). the river, and anything beyond the confines of Kashi was invisible. It actually felt like we were in some other world that had been completely severed from reality, and it was easy to believe that this place existed between the realms of physical and spiritual.
We met a couple of interesting Israeli guys who were studying Sanskrit, one of them lived in Varanasi and was a full Shiv’ite convert, with a Shrine to Lord Shiva in his room. He introduced Erika to his yoga master and Erika began to have a couple of hours of intense yoga therapy each day to try and sort her back and shoulder problems that months of cycling had caused. We also spent a lot of time quizzing them about Hindu philosophy and religion, and they confirmed that most of the Sadhu’s that had come to Varanasi were not true holy men, as these would still be in their caves high in the mountains.
We decided to stay in Varanasi for Shiva Ratri, as everyday more and more pilgrims were arriving for this festival and the energy and excitement was increasing accordingly. This is the night that marks Lord Shiva’s marriage to Parvati,
A World Apart
Varanasi and the Ganga after the rain. or Shakti - the mother goddess of Hinduism (all other female deities are really just different manifestations of Shakti/Devi, who in turn is only the female aspect of Shiva…..) and is a big festival all over India. As Varanasi is ‘Shiva’s City’ it is especially important here, and so it seemed silly to leave before it.
The festival begins on the night before when male devotees begin an amazing circuit of Kashi, visiting hundreds of temples and bathing at the ritual ghats as they make a circumambulation of the sacred city. I’m not sure how long this circuit is as I was given varying lengths of 25km, 35km and even 80km, but they complete it barefoot, at high speed (at least to begin with) and the whole way is stone flagged so your feet take an amazing pounding. This is offset somewhat by the fact they get to drink bhang all the way along. Bhang is a green paste made from cannabis that is mixed with water or yoghurt and drunk - bhang lassi’s are particularly common in Varanasi and balls of bhang can be bought legally from government-licensed shops throughout the city.
On the evening Shiva Ratri
The Ganges
Dhobi Wallahs (laundrymen)washing clothes immediatly downstream of a sewer outlet. began a huge noise and commotion reached up to the hotel rooftop from the ghats below, sounding like a crowd at a football match. When we went to investigate we find the ghats are amazingly crowded with lines of crazed looking pilgrims sprinting along holding onto the guy in front so their motion is not disrupted, and chanting “Boom Shiva” over and over. In places they dive into the river, dunking themselves under several times in the water which is even more filthy than usual, with mud and sediment having been stirred up by all the people. In contrast the lanes away from the river are empty and deserted, the cleanest and most peaceful they will be all year. By midnight the crowds have thinned along the main ghat, as they are now progressing around the edges of the city, but there are still groups of stragglers sprinting along the hard stones with a distant, far-off look in their eyes. It is quite crazy.
The next morning we watch men limping back along the ghats as they finish their circuit and return for another dip in the river. Their feet are swollen and they can barely walk. That night
there are special puja ceremonies on the ghats and then in the evening is the wedding procession. We have seen these all over India and they all follow a similar pattern - a cart carrying a sound system, some musicians and a singer is pushed slowly around the town or village, followed by uniformed band of drummers and horn players who play along to the ridiculously loud and distorted music. The musicians are followed by men dancing who are flanked by the lighting system - usually 2 columns of old (and presumably lower caste) women balancing huge wooden candelabras on their heads full of flashing lights. They are connected together by electrical cables which in turn are linked to another cart with a fancy flashing light display on it. In front of this will be another band of drummers and dancers, and then finally a small group of women and the groom mounted on a decorated horse. Behind all this will be a rickshaw cart carrying the generator used to power the lights and sound system.
This is a wedding procession for a god though, so it is enormous and comprises dozens of processions like the one described above,
Purifying Goddess
The remains of Puja offerings floating on the river. several elephants which charge through the crowds scattering people everywhere, huge bands of drummers, floats with sound systems and crazy dancers, and a mounted procession of people dressed as gods. To be honest, I didn’t understand half of what was going on but it was incredible, with happy people dancing manically all over the streets and it was well worth having stayed to see it.
For some reason this was not the end of our stay in Varanasi, however. We met 2 other cyclists having similar problems to us in terms of getting out if India overland. They were pausing too, not sure about the road ahead either. They had thought like us that it would be possible to cycle into China from Nepal via Tibet. Mohammed is from Iran and we realised as we chatted that we had been e-mailing him about parts back when we were crossing Iran, and now here he was having cycled to India also! He is cycling around the world planting
trees as he goes, a truly admirable occupation. He decides to go north to Nepal and fly into Tibet if he has to. Benno is from Switzerland and is aiming to get
Contemplation
Robin ponders the mysteries of life and death on a quiet ghat. to Australia and back without flying, so like us his options are more limited. We spend a lot of time discussing hitching rides on boats, and he sets off towards Kolkata.
We had thought that Varanasi might be the end of our continuous cycling. But when it came to the decisions about actually buying a train ticket it was harder than we thought. The feeling of a continuous trip by bike had become a bit disjointed since Pakistan when Erika got ill, since then we have not actually cycled continuously for very long without stopping because of illness or other reasons. Our momentum was gone, we wanted it back, but the thought of cycling in the flat Ganges plain did not inspire, also the lack of an escape route for the subcontinent was dissolving any inspiration about the road ahead. We spent days discussing and arguing about what to do and where to go. Our options were limited however, by the need to get to Kolkata to collect some parcels, one of which would hopefully contain some badly needed parts for my rear wheel. If it were not for this maybe we would have turned north and spent a
week cycling to Kathmandu and back into the mountains, but as it was we needed to get to Kolkata quickly, Erika was not to keen on cycling and I was not sure if my bike would even make it there.
In the end, after buying and then not using a train ticket to Kolkata, we decided to cycle onwards for two days to Bodh Gaya. This was a compromise to see how my wheel would be, how the cycling would be and whether we would continue by bike or on the train to Kolkata. By now we had been in Varanasi for almost 3 weeks, and I still can’t really account for most of this time, but it was a good time and it was still hard to drag ourselves away even after this long. There is definitely something very strange about the place.
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Karina
non-member comment
Enjoying every minute in oz
This is the second blog entry I have read (the other one was the Sikkim entry) and I'm really enjoying every minute of it. So far I have been looking at entries on cities I also visited on my Indian trip, so perhaps it is also partly nostalgia (I loved Varanasi - a truely unbelievable city), but I'm also eager to read about others. Erica and Robin, your travels, and more importantly the way you travel is inspiring, I recently bought myself a bike. So far I have only made it 10 km to the St Kilda beach and back (in Melbourne, Australia) but it's a start! Keep on riding and keep on writing - you both write very well and give a refreshing perspective on the places you visit. As I'm sure you know by now, getting an unguarded honest opinion in India is a hard task!