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Published: December 19th 2005
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The Saddhu (with Apprentice)
Here's the guy who branded me. At least he was kind enough to pose for a picture after his sneak-attack. As always, getting to my destination city was an adventure in itself. On one of my trains between Agra and Varanasi, I was harassed by a drunk man claiming to be an army officer who demanded to see my identification papers. His friends calmed him down, bought me some tea, and chatted with me until he climbed into his bunk and passed out.
On the long train ride, I had plenty of time to try and steel myself for the onslaught that awaited me in Varanasi. From what I had read in my guidebook, it sounded like the sort of place where the unwary traveller would be eaten alive by touts and scammers. There were warnings that "criminal elements" (a Hindu mafia, if you please) operated in the city, intercepting tourists at arrival points like the train station.
And no sooner had I stepped off the train than I was, in fact, intercepted. A man immediately approached me, offering me a rickshaw ride to anywhere I wanted to go, for only five rupees. Fortunately, I had had enough experiences at that point to know that any offer in India that seems too good to be true is. I was
Ghat
Here is one of the bigger, busier ghats, as seen from the river. later told that if I had gone with the man, he almost certainly would have extracted a much larger sum from me than five rupees (10 cents)--namely, whatever I had on me.
Even once I found a rickshaw driver who agreed to take me to my hotel of choice, he tried valiantly to steer me away. He named several other hotels that would be, in his view, better choices. He repeatedly assured me that it is "dangerous" to stay in the part of the old city I was heading for. Maybe he was telling the truth, but I had made up my mind as to where I was going.
I never would have found the hotel on my own. The streets of the old city are too narrow even for rickshaws, so we had to go the last half mile or so on foot, the driver leading, myself trying to weave through the crowds and keep up. I have been to a lot of towns that are alleged to have maze-like quarters where one could easily get lost, but Varanasi is the genuine article. The streets are little more than narrow alleys, with tall buildings packed close on
Street Scene
Here's a typical old city scene, although this street is a grand boulevard compared with some others. either side. Street signs are nowhere to be seen--and of course, they'd be in Hindi if there were any. In most cities I navigate by landmarks, but such a strategy wouldn't have gotten me very far amidst Varanasi's haphazard crush of crumbling buildings and temples. At times I found it difficult even to keep myself oriented as to which direction the Ganges lay.
The morning after my arrival, I woke up early for the requisite sunrise boat trip on the Ganges. Varanasi is one of the holiest cities of the Hindu faith. Pilgrims come from all over India for ritual bathing in the holy river. There are hundreds of sets of concrete stairs (called ghats) leading down from the city's edge to the water. Most of the ghats are used for bathing, washing, etc., but there are also "burning ghats" where bodies of the Hindu faithful are cremated, and the ashes scattered into the river. All these rituals on the ghats, including the cremations, are performed very publicly; hence, the tourists come in droves.
I was unimpressed with the boat ride. It seemed at times as if there were more photo-snapping tourists afloat than there were pilgrims on
Brahmin Ceremony
Some young upper caste Hindus perform a ritual facing the Ganges. Don't ask me what any of it means though. the ghats. I found it much more interesting to wander around town and the ghats on foot, so I set off with a guy from Thailand I met on the boat to explore.
He wanted to visit Vishwanath temple, alternatively known as the "Golden Temple" since its pyramidical roof is covered with some 800 kilograms of gold. Finding it was no easy task, as maps are essentially worthless in Varanasi. We wandered, asking soldiers, shopkeepers, pedestrians which direction we should go. We followed the trail of finger points and hand motions until we came to a heavily guarded iron fence. It soon became clear that our trouble finding the temple had to do with the fact that the security perimeter surrounding it extends several streets beyond those from which the place is actually visible. The security presence is not specifically there to protect the temple, but rather, to protect the adjacent Great Mosque. In the holy city of Varanasi, the conspicuous Muslim place of worship faces the apparently very real threat of destruction by Hindu fanatics. After being thoroughly patted down, I passed through the gate and underneath a watchtower, but even after all my trouble, I couldn't actually go into the temple itself--Hindus only.
No one is allowed to take cameras, cell phones, or any other electronic devices within the security perimeter--not for religious reasons, but because bomb detonators come in so many shapes and sizes. So my Thai friend and I had to take turns having our respective looks around. As I sat near the gate waiting for him to come back, I was branded.
I saw the holy man coming. He was hard to miss in his saffron robes, flanked by his similarly dressed young apprentices. I had my suspicions that he might be in the business of dotting foreheads, and sure enough . . . I turned away for a minute, and when I looked back--BAM! I had an ash smear on my forehead, courtesy of the holy man's thumb. There followed much tapping with stick, light patting of cheeks and chin, and almost wholly incomprehensible talk of the third eye of wisdom that the ash smear was to remind the wearer (victim) of. He seemed like a friendly enough guy, so I let him talk at me until he was content with his efforts.
In spite of having spent some three weeks already in India at the time, I found myself walking around that first day with my mouth open more often than not. In Varanasi, there is always something to gape at. Holy cows barge through the narrow lanes. Some of the steets are only marginally wider than a cow, and when a big heffer with horns got moving, people all but dove out of the way. It's not exactly Pamplona, but I suppose being gored is an actual possibility. And naturally, holy cow excrement covers all the streets. (Fortunately I did not experience any rain in Varanasi, that repudetly turns the streets into a stinky slip-and-slide.) Toss into the mix shiverring pilgrims walking through the streets in their skivvies carrying tiny jars of Ganges water on their way to temples. Monkeys climb all over buildings everywhere. And of course, there are the ubiquitous stray dogs and prodigious amounts of garbage lying around. It may seem like a lot to handle, but I was fascinated by the place.
My hotel was a refuge from the chaos. From the rooftop restaurant, I had an excellent view of the line of ghats, and the seemingly endless sprawl of the other rooftops of the city. Anywhere I looked I could see people washing their clothes, bathing children, cooking, flying kites--in short, going about their daily lives in plain sight.
One evening as I was walking home, trying to beat the darkness that would make the streets around my hotel even more hopeless to navigate, I happened upon a Brahmin ceremony on one of the main ghats. How long have people been doing these same things here, I wondered to myself. If I had been on that ghat a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago, wouldn't I have seen the same ritual being performed? I sat around that evening trying to put down into words the sense of age that the city conveyed to me. I have since then read a passage in a book that explains it better than I could. In "Midnight's Children," Salman Rushdie calls Varanasi "the oldest living city in the world, the city which was already old when Buddha was young."
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Susan
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Very interesting
I LOVE to travel - but have 2 young children to raise right now, so I live vicariously through travel blogs. I stumbled upon yours and it has been very interesting and entertaining. I look forward to reading more of your adventures!