The Holy City... and a city that's a hole - Varanasi, India

I'll pick up the story where Heather left it, as we leave Khajuraho. As there is no train the day we want to leave, we arrange for a taxi to take us the 120km to the next nearest train station for Varanasi, a place called Satna. The drive is a pleasant one and we pass through Nappa Tiger Reserve. Both myself and Heather are glued to the windows looking for a tell tale glimpse of orange and black, but the tigers are as elusive as an Indian Hotel with hot water and clean sheets.

We arrive at the station 2 hours early for the 7:20pm overnight train and have little option but to find our platform and wait. Unfortunately, Satna is not a major (nor minor) tourist destination, so the locals stare at us constantly (especially men staring at Heather). We've kinda grown used to this, but as we are the only white people on the platform, it is especially intense and when our train rolls up an hour late at 8:15pm, Heather is on the verge of a breakdown of epic proportions.  We are in the first class section of the sleeper train, but its still pretty grim, we settle into our individual bunks and try to sleep.

Heather in her sleeper bunk

Our scheduled arrival time of 4:40am passes and we finally roll into Varanasi at 7:20am. We take an auto-rickshaw to the Hotel Surya (as recommended by our Hotel Surya in Kharjuraho) and decide to spend the day recouperating from the previous evening. The Hotel is a little bit more luxurious than any previous, with a nice formal restaurant, a chilled out Hookah bar complete with middle eastern decor and last, but most importantly, a swimming pool!

Heather practicing underwater yoga!

The next morning we take an auto rickshaw ride around the main sights of Varanasi, the university complex, Vishwanath Hindu temple (complete with a lady singing in prayer), the monkey temple ... bet you can guess what was there, then a trip to a 3,000 year old temple in the heart of the city. We also took the obligatory trip to a silk factory and a 30 minute sales pitch for their goods. I wanted to visit the Ghats and see the daily rituals of hindu life, but  due to the monsoon rains, the river has flooded the usual walkways, but our driver advises us to take a boat ride at sunset to view the same things.

Vishwanath Hindu Temple

 

We have lunch in the hookah bar and meet Adam and Alicia, a couple from Wellington, New Zealand. We get on instantly and invite them to join us on our evening trip to the Ganges river.

We squeeze 4 of us into a rickshaw (highly amusing as Adam is a big lad at 6ft 3in) and charge through the rush hour traffic. The traffic in Varanasi is as bad, if not worse than Delhi. The ranking system is as follows - Pedestrian, Bike, Rickshaw, Autorickshaw, Car, Bus / Truck, Cow. Its hard to describe the complete attack on all your senses, from the smells of exhaust fumes, urine, rubbish and various body odors, to the dust that fills your lungs and covers your body. The sound of the horns of 1,000's of vehicles and the fear that fills your body when your driver goes for a quickly disappearing gap.

We squeeze down some alleyways only 3 or 4 inches bigger than the rickshaw and arrive at the River Ganga (Ganges). As we walk down the steps of the Ghat, the first thing we see is a a dead body, shrouded in cloth, floating past us in the river. The same river in which men are bathing, a child is drinking from and someone else is brushing their teeth.

Life on the River Ganga (Ganges)

After what seems like an eternity of negotiation, we secure our place on a boat and head down the river. The banks of the Ganga are full of temples and there are people everywhere bathing, we pass by the electric fired crematorium (where the poor people are cremated for 7 quid / $10), and then travel further up river to the burning ghat where a body has been put onto a fresh fire. Apparently this is expensive by Indian terms at around 50 pounds, however this is a 24 hour a day process and anywhere between 120 - 150 people are cremated per day. As darkness falls we moore alongside another 50 boats to watch the festival of light, a daily Hindu ceremony held on one of the Ghats.

At the festival of light 

Our final day in Varanasi is spent chilling at the hotel. After we had intially decided to take the sleeper train to Nepal, Adam & Alicia alter their plans and decide to head to the Chitwan National Park with us, so we spend some time negotiating a price for a taxi to the Nepalese border (an 8 hour drive away) and onward travel to Chitwan.

For me personally, Varanasi was a bit of a disappointment, I came here looking forward to seeing the devotion of the Hindu people in their holiest city, but I never found that same sense of spirtuality that is so obvious in Rome. Maybe it's just my failure to see past the dirt and poverty of the city or a lack of understanding of the hindu faith.

- Mark 'Indian Feet' Cleverly