Vivid Varanasi

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The final destination for our holiday was an add-on trip to the holy city of Varanasi. And while it was a bit of a hassle catching a domestic flight for just a day and a half it was well worth the effort.

Before the Varanasi flight we crammed in a few extra Delhi sites - the National Museum and the Lotus Temple. The Museum contains interesting articles found in India and throughout S E Asia. I particularly enjoyed the ancient Buddha collection and a display of musical instruments that was collected by one woman and donated to the museum. The Lotus Temple is a Bahai house of worship that is built to resemble a lotus flower. I expected to find a lotus garden with a small temple, instead it’s a large building that reminded me of the Sydney Opera House surrounded by a garden of petunias and marigolds. Very impressive inside and out.

Back to Varanasi…When I read the descriptions of this town I expected a small rural town (similar in size to Bathurst or Echuca), but this is India and everything is bigger and more crowded. Instead Varanasi is a sprawling place with one focus - the Ganges River.

Our first glimpse of the mother Ganges was our dawn boat ride to watch the pilgrims immerse themselves in the river, and cremate their dead (I looked away for that part). It was crowded even at 5.30 am and quite smoggy but well worth the effort.

We returned to the same location at sunset to once again jump aboard a boat to witness the Aarti Fire Ceremony. This time it was extremely crowded. It’s the most people I’ve ever seen crammed into one location, and apparently the same ceremony happens every night! I thought the boat ride would have been a sedate cruise up and down like the sunrise version but it involved cramming the small timber boats together (like a log jam) and then watching the shore-based ceremony from the water.

In between the two Ganges visits we visited an amazing Buddhist site at a place called Sarnath that featured ruins that had been excavated and studied. Apparently it was destroyed by the invading armies, but it was great to see the footings and remains of what would have been an amazing Buddhist temple.

While at the temple, we met a group of school children on an excursion who asked several of our group to pose in their photographs. I’m not sure what the attraction of photographing foreigners is but I was happy to oblige.

With Varanasi complete, we turned our heads for home via Delhi. In my usual way I managed to pick up an illness at the end of the holiday, this time it’s a head cold that made it’s way around the group. Not much fun to travel home with a racking cough and feeling ordinary but at least it didn’t ruin my holiday.

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