Varanasi - Life on the Ganges

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We arrived in India overland on the 13th of November, we caught a bus to Gorekpore, and then an overnight train to Varanasi.
Varanasi is a holy place for Hindu people, the river ganges is to them the most holy in the world, they bath here, was their clothes, pray here, and burn their dead.
While we were there we stayed right near the river, with ganges views from our rooftop restaurant, while we were eating and hanging out there we saw many monkeys on the roof tops of other buildings.
While we were in Varanasi we saw the main burning ghat which was the next ghat along from our guesthouse. Here they burn bodies 24 hours a day, there lots of bodies burning there. It is a very polluted place, people told us how they saw bodies floating in the river. There are a few types of people that are not burnt, they include children, holy men, pregnant women, people with diseases, and people killed by snakes, these people are instead taken by their families on a boat, they are weighted down and thrown into the ganges. While we were in Varanasi we also went to a nightly Puja ceremony at the main ghat, a puja ceremony is a prayer ceremony, which was quite interesting, although we got bored. On our last morning we had a early morning river cruise, where we saw people bathing in the ganges, some people got their head right under. Some people would swim just for fun. They bath in the ganges to wash away their sins.

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Comments

[munish]

Nice post
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