Varanasi and the Ganges

G’day all,
Well I have just spent the past 3 days in Varanasi, one of the most amazing and holy places I’ve ever seen. I met these really great English people on the train from Agra to Varanasi Tom, Gemma, and Louise and I’ve been hanging out with them the whole time. Tom headed off to Bombay and I’m meeting up with Gemma and Louise again in a few hours in Katmandu in Nepal. On the train up to Varanasi we had to chain our backpacks to our sleeper beds so nobody could steal our stuff during the night. I think I also may have kept one eye open whilst sleeping too because apparently many backpackers get their bags stolen on the trains over here. Once arriving in Varanasi we quickly fought our way through the pack of hungry rickshaw drivers and found a really nice new hotel to stay in just off the Ganges River. When we arrived we were so dehydrated and hungry and so I bought a bottle of water, a coke, an iced coffee, a mango juice, a sweet lassie, not to mention my latest stable diet of chips and fried eggs. We first went for a walk along the Ganges and came across our first “burning ghats”. The burning ghats are where they publicly cremate the fresh dead and spread their ashes and remains in the Ganges as a way of freeing them from their sins and enter Nirvana (heaven in Hindu). We thought that maybe it’s done privately inside a building but we were well wrong. We first saw this fire with logs and what we thought it was a pig being cooked. As we got closer (like 2 meters away) we realized it was the top half of a dead man on fire and charcoaled with his hands clenched tightly (see 2nd picture and look carefully at fireplace). It was so freaky and we were almost in a state of shock as we didn’t expect to see what we saw. Apparently they do hundreds and hundreds of cremations each day and some of the burning ghats burn 24 hours a day. Depending on the price and quality of the wood it can take anywhere between 1 and 4 hours to cremate a person. Before we knew it we were invited to watch another cremation as they brought out a fresh body, dipped it in the Ganges and placed it on a pile of logs right in front of our eyes. We watched for a good 45 minutes as the body went from fresh meat to charcoal chicken. The weird thing was that they had 5-10 year old boys running the cremation and they poked and prodded the bodies with sticks until they crumbled away to a little chunk of charcoaled meat is left and it’s thrown into the Ganges. They hit the heads and arms of the bodies until they either snap off or disintegrate and at one stage we watched this mans skull being smashed into two by this tiny little kid. The locals talk about the cremations as if it’s nothing and they push you around to have a better few and get in close as you can to see it better. The worst part was when the second body sizzled to a point where the skin on the dead mans belly exploded and his guts popped out of his chest and lay there out in the open. Apparently the Ganges has magical powers and it stops the bodies from smelling bad while they are being cremated. The weird thing about that is it’s so true, you couldn’t smell and hair or nails burning at all. What was even worse was and perhaps slightly in bad taste that it actually smelt not too bad at all and it actually brought on cravings for a nice Aussie barbecue of snags, chops and rissoles. Apart from the burning ghats there were a million other things happening on the fascinating and colourful walk along the Ganges. What don’t you see? There was everything from kids playing cricket, people doing washing, kites flying, people scrubbing water buffalos and cows in the water, to even raw sewerage being pumped straight in across the footpath and into the river. The water is supposed to be so polluted it’s rated as septic yet you see the locals swimming in it, bathing in it, and even brushing their teeth and drinking it. Each night there is a big ceremony along the Ganges with thousands and thousands of people watching drums being played and acts performed whilst candles are floated down the river in the background. Apart from the whole cremations thing I found it to be quite a romantic town. On our second day in Varanasi we did a 5:30am sunrise boat tour of the Ganges which was really nice and had one of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen. I think the highlight of the tour was seeing this mangy dog chewing on the remains of a burnt human body it had pulled out of the river. There are thousands of people bathing at sunrise and you see many really old people waiting to die bathing to bless themselves. Varanasi is also famous for its silks and it’s pretty much the best place in the world to buy a silk scarf or a bed cover but it also means a million dodgy Indians trying to sell you fake silk to rip you off. One silk shop we went to had photos of the actress Goldie Hawn all over the walls as she is a regular customer there. It is very dangerous after 8pm in Varanasi so we all got back to our hotel each night before dark and relaxed and indulged in the fantastic food the hotel cooked. Food and accommodation is so cheap here you can live like a absolute king and eat and drink pretty much whatever you like (apart from beef) for under $3. On Friday night we caught an over night train and two busses up to Katmandu in Nepal. I’ll update you all next from the land of Everest and friendly people.

Woodsy