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Took a short flight to Varanasi, the sacred city of the Hindus aka city of light, and so far, I think it's one of my favorite places in India. Manageable and less crowded albeit that it's Sunday and there's not much traffic on Sundays.
After we settled into our hotel and rested a little, we headed out to the Ganges River to take a boat ride. Ghats of Ganga are perhaps the holiest spots of Varanasi. The Ganga Ghats at Varanasi are full of pilgrims who flock to the place to take a dip in the holy Ganges river, for their daily ritual ablutions which is believed to absolve one from all sins and also the dead are sent from all over India to be cremated there.
Manikarnika Ghat, the biggest and most famous cremation ground. The burning bodies on open fires are for the rich which costs around 3000 rupees about 63 usd and the poor can get cremated in electric fires for about 700 rupees which is about 15 usd. People who cannot get cremated are babies, pregnant women, sadhus - highly religious people who renunciates (who have left behind all material and sexual attachments and live
in caves, forests and temples all over India), and victims of copra bites. We're not allowed to take pictures of burning bodies otherwise the families can harass you to pay up to 700 rupees but our zoom on our camera didn't cause any suspicions.
We enjoyed walking around the streets in the morning and night bc we saw how locals live up close. Definitely would have liked to do more of that before we left.
At night we saw the candle light ceremony. Half an hour of people chanting and people moving candle lights in a circular motion was a little too long for me so we left before it ended. Also the bats flying all over our heads to feast on bugs wasn't helpful. The bats were still flying around everywhere when we got there the next morning at 4:30am.
All in all, I think this was a great ending to our month long India trip.
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