Varanasi - probably the craziest city in the world!


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Asia » India » Uttar Pradesh » Varanasi
December 11th 2009
Published: December 16th 2009
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Day 529: Thursday 10th December - The city of life....and dead bodies, which float down the River Ganges!

Today we could have had a lie in. Could being the operative word. With our guesthouse overlooking the River Ganges and the life of the city which is centred on the ghats (a series of bathing steps or platforms that lead down to the river), you wake when the city decides to wake, which is early. In fact, the city never really sleeps, or the noises that drift into our room never stop. It doesn’t help that we are within earshot of Manikarnika Ghat, or the burning ghat as it is colloquially known, where bodies are cremated around the clock. More of that later though. Loud processions with drum beats and other musical accompaniment are often heard in the alleyways below leading down to the ghat where presumably a cremation of a loved one follows. Hence, we are awake before 7am, but that is no bad thing as a busy did awaits.

Our first task of the day after breakfast is not to sightsee but to go to the train station to book our train tickets for the forthcoming journeys in the week ahead. The hardest part of this proves to be the first part, which is just negotiating our way through the old city’s maze like alleyways and out to the road where we can take a rickshaw. There is nothing distinctive to take your bearings from and we guess our way out, following the alleys we think are leading away from the river. It must take about half an hour to reach the road, or at least that is what it felt like as we avoid bicycles, motorbikes, a throng of people, cows and various other animals that belong more in a farmyard than in a busy city with in excess of 1 million people.

Once we reach the road we flag down a rickshaw and get him to take us to the railway station, which is another delightful journey through Varanasi’s chaotic streets. I could have taken a hundred photos such was the rich tapestry of life on show but instead I just take the intensity of it all in. Rickshaw rides, and journeys through Indian cities in general are special as you can never guarantee what you will see but you can guarantee that it will be interesting. I’ve had an enjoyable day already before I’ve even done anything, and only India really has that effect on me, it fascinates and stimulates constantly.

The railway station has an office inside especially for foreigners to buy rail tickets. This is a great idea and makes it infinitely easier than China. The staff are used to dealing with ignorant foreigners and there are no language barriers. The problem with Indian trains though is working out the timetable. Some trains don’t go every day and when you try and use the online service if you don’t know the train numbers (which as a foreigner you don’t) then you are wasting your time. As I said though the staff are well used to dealing with foreigners so any difficulty is taken out of the equation. We walk away with 3 out of the 4 tickets we wanted, and have three overnight train journeys to look forward to in the next week. The only one we didn’t book was the Agra to Delhi leg but that is the shortest at just 3 hours and we can either get an unreserved train seat or the bus so it isn’t an issue. We get all the tickets for just 1200 Rupees (£15), which is a bargain, or at least compared to the price it is in China or indeed the UK for that matter. Mission accomplished we can now get back to what we came to Varanasi to do, see the ghats.

We take an autorickshaw to Raj Ghat, the first of the hundred plus ghats from where we start our walk down beside the Ganges. Perhaps now is the time to fill you in on a bit of Varanasi’s history. Varanasi once known as Benares or the city of life is sacred to Hindus and also one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. The city of Shiva is one of the holiest places in India, where Hindu pilgrims come to wash away a lifetime of sins in the Ganges or to cremate loved ones. Varanasi has always been an auspicious place to die, since dying here offers liberation from the cycle of birth and death. The city is the beating heart of the Hindu universe, a crossroads between the physical and spiritual worlds, and the Ganges is viewed as a river of salvation, an everlasting symbol of hope to past, present and future generations.

So what makes Varanasi special? Well let me begin to describe our walk along the Ghats where we encountered the very best and very worst aspects of India. Overwhelming? Yes at times. Vile? Yes at times. Unbelievable? Yes at times. Absorbing? Most definitely. Special? Beyond doubt. As we walk down from Raj Ghat we see the whole spectrum of life (and death) in the city being played out before us. We pass people bathing in the holy waters of the Ganges, people swimming, people doing their laundry in the river, and lines of clothes hanging to dry along the entire length of the Ghats. I had thought this morning about getting my laundry done but I am now pleased I decided otherwise as undoubtedly it would have been washed in the dirty river and come back less clean than before. I will explain about the cleanliness of the Ganges in a short while as it is critical to the understanding of this city.

Me and Bruno talk to friendly locals and watch games of cricket being played on the ghats as we make our way down the first few kilometres of the 7km stretch of the river which is lined with ghats. There isn’t just people on the ghats, and tens of thousands bathe in the river every day but also buffalos, the sacred cow, goats, dogs. You name it we probably saw it. Some of the buffalo are even being washed in the river. In this river and along the ghats anything goes, and I mean anything. With all these animals there is inevitably big piles of shit everywhere. It is vile, but even more so is the sight of men, women and children using the riverside as an open latrine, and doing so without shame in the full glare of everyone. But nobody seems to care, this is part of everyday life in Varanasi. I’ve occasionally wondered what life was like in early Victorian era Britain before proper sanitation and picking your way amongst the human and animal waste is about as close as I’m ever likely to get. My choice of footwear - flip flops - is utterly inappropriate, and I’m contemplating how long it is going to be before I step in something I shouldn’t!

The architecture of the buildings rising up from the ghats is interesting, and the colour of the buildings is surpassed only by the colour of life in this charismatic city. By lunchtime we’ve made it to Manikarnika Ghat, the burning ghat. Just as me and Bruno are discussing where to take lunch, a funeral procession of people accompanied by music and followed by a dead body passes literally two feet from where we’re stood. We have to squeeze into the side of the alleyway just to let them pass. The dead body is covered apart from the head. It is an old man, who presumably met his death in the last 24 hours, it being Hindu custom to cremate the dead within a day of their death.

Following an extremely disappointing lunch we walk to the burning ghat to observe what is going on. Half a dozen piles of firewood, with bodies in various stages of cremation are burning beside the river. At the top of the ghat, huge piles of firewood are stacked and we see logs being weighed on giant scales so the cost of cremation can be calculated. We are soon joined by a ‘guide’ just as I was in Pashupatinath in Kathmandu. He explains the intricacies of the cremation. He tells us that only men and women are cremated, which caste is burned where, the costs etc. I’m half listening as I know a bit about it from visiting Kathmandu and this guy has con-artist written all over him. I’m more interesting in watching them dousing a corpse in the Ganges prior to the cremation. Only men are allowed down on to the ghat to watch their loved ones be cremated, a result of women becoming martyrs and throwing themselves into the fire in the past. It all seems a lot less organised and much less civilised than it was in Kathmandu. At the end of his rehearsed speech he asks for a donation towards the hospice where he works, where they use the money to pay for the cremation. Bruno too kindly gives him 50 Rupees (60 pence) which I doubt ever finds its way to the hospice.

We continue to walk south along the ghats, coming soon to Varanasi’s liveliest ghat, Dasaswamedh Ghat. This is my least favourite as it is the most ‘touristy’. I am hassled constantly if I want to take a boat, and above all if I want a massage, with one guy grabbing my arm and starting a massage before I’ve acquiesced to it. Further along and we reach Harishchandra Ghat, another cremation ghat - smaller and secondary in importance to Manikarnika. When we reach Assi Ghat we stop for a cup of chai that Indian institution of sugary, milky tea which already after just a day in India I have acquired a taste for. To be honest this taste started in Nepal where it is called milk tea. In England I wouldn’t entertain my tea this milky and even to have a pinch of sugar. But in the Indian subcontinent it just seems right.

Rather than walk back along the ghats to our guesthouse which lies approximately halfway along the 7km stretch we take a boat back along the river. This is the most unbelievable part of the day. I finish my bottle of water and fill it up with water from the Ganges for comparison to Bruno’s bottle of mineral water. The colour is more like urine than water. There is absolutely no way I would a) do my laundry in this river b) wash in it c) swim it and d) drink it. But the Indians do, every day, for this is the holy Ganges. Our boatman proves this by drinking half a litre of Ganges water much to mine and Bruno’s amazement. This is the same river that contains 1.5 million faecal coliform per 100ml of water (in water that is safe for bathing this figure should be less than 500!). 30 large sewers are continuously discharging into the river along the 7km stretch of river. Then you have the human ashes from the cremation ghats and goodness knows what rubbish being swept down from the ghats. And if this isn’t quite enough to deter you, there are the dead bodies which are also thrown into the river!

Just 5 minutes after our boatman has drank water from the Ganges I spot an object floating towards the boat. Something tells me this is a corpse before it gets close. It has the shape of one and we’re in Varanasi where everything goes. True enough it is a dead body, probably a Saddhu (Hindu holy man) our boatman tells us. He explains that children, pregnant women, those bitten by snakes and Saddhu’s are all thrown into the river rather than being cremated as they are already pure. I just wish the same could be said for the heavily polluted Ganges.

What a day! Varanasi is definitely special and this has been one of the most interesting and absorbing days I have had for a long time. When you’ve travelled for as long as I have you can sometimes think you’ve seen it all. In Varanasi you do see it all, and that is what makes it unique.

We can hear wedding celebrations again during the evening and I would love to get a closer look but the chance of finding our way back through the warren of the alleyways in the dark is slim to none. So, instead we stay in the guesthouse.

Day 530: Friday 11th December - Another interesting walk down the Ghats

We wake up before dawn today to take a boat trip down the Ganges. I’m already awake before my alarm sounds at 5:15am, woken by the Muslim’s call to prayer and the sound from the funeral processions making their way down to Manikarnika Ghat. In the early morning fog, the Ganges appears more spiritual. Candles burn decorated with flowers for puja (prayers), and Hindu’s are making their way down the ghats for an early morning bathing session. Some meditate next to the river. It is a soothing experience against yesterday’s overwhelming one.

We opt for a lazy morning after the craziness of yesterday before once again we venture along the ghats to get lunch. Along the way we pass a snake charmer with several cobras. It is yet another photo opportunity, and this city is not short of them. After lunch we choose to have a few more quiet hours no doubt trying to decompress and come to terms with what we’ve just witnessed in the last two days.

At 6pm it is time to leave the city and take the train to Agra. We arrive in plenty of time so I decide to get my hiking boots repaired by one of the shoe shiners outside the station for just 30 Rupees (40 pence). A week ago in Kathmandu a boy tried to charge me 350 Nepalese Rupees (£3) for the same job. India is cheap in comparison with Nepal. As I sit waiting for the guy to stitch my shoes, rats can be seen running around just a couple of metres away. Disgusting, but this is Varanasi. Our journey is in sleeper class, the lowest class of sleeper on Indian trains. Like the hard sleeper sections in Vietnam and China there are 6 bunks per ‘cabin’ but is it very much open plan. It is noisier than train journeys in other countries and the bunks are basic and uncomfortable with no bedding being provided. My sleep is interrupted by stopping in noisy stations and waking up cold as the train is freezing.

It is often said about India that you will either love it or hate it. No other country divides opinion quite like India. Varanasi is as crazy and unique as cities come and if you want to test whether you will love or hate India then I would come to Varanasi. Me? I love Varanasi and I love India. Crazy it may be, vile also but utterly absorbing and definitely special. Where else would you experience homemade fireworks going off within a metre of you, the locals bathing, swimming and drinking a river 3000 times more polluted than the safe limit and dead bodies floating down the river?! I can think of none.



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