Atithi Sagar Hotel Varanasi

... un montón de lugares interesantes para que conozcamos. Lo primero que hicimos fue ir al sagrado Ganges o Mother Ganga como le llaman acá, y nos explico un par de cosas básicas de los rituales de cremaciones. Este rio es súper importante para los Hindúes ya que es en donde habita Shiva, su Dios supremo. Es por eso que al morir, es todo un privilegio que los restos del difunto sean liberados ahí con el fin de purificar el alma y estar más cerca de Dios. Esto convierte a Varanasi en ...

... city and bought some street food which was served on a leaf, Em found it really difficult to eat though as the smells around the place make it difficult to keep an appetite. We got a rickshaw to the train station to book our ticket to Agra but unfortunately it was full so we are going to Delhi instead on an overnight train, we wanted sleeper class but they weren't available either so we had to pay more for a air conditioned carriage instead.

That evening we went ...

... tait bonne, mais le volume..... ! Je vous dis pas ! J’ai demandé au vendeur plusieurs fois de baisser le volume, mais il était toujours trop fort pour moi. Avec tout ce bruit qui les entoure ils doivent soit être habitués soit avoir le tympan endommagé. Si même dans une petite pièce comme le magasin de CDs ils écoutent la musique à tue-tête....

Varanasi en trois mots : trop de gens, beaucoup trop de bruit et un Gange étant une eau brune peu appétissante

... him to write down our instructions for us on how to get there!! cycle riskshaw was fun :)
the ghats themselves were beautiful!! seing the holy place whihc ivve leant about since i first ever learnt bout hindusism was pretty cool
the expeirenced Thali for the first time ver yesterday!!!!!!!!!!! amazing meal
like a buffet but vegetarian or meat rice, dhal,chipati, pototao in s asauce and ...

... with what turned out to be all the swine flu symptoms of weakness, fatigue, fever, cough, sore throat, diarrhea, body aches and runny nose. It was a low point having to lie in the bed all day. We're not sure if it was actual swine flu but it seemed to disappear just as rapidly as it started, very fast. The fever was very high and Varanasi was out of thermometers to gauge it until some chap went somewhere on his motorboke and brought one into the pharmacy for me ...

... people with no money or family come to wait to die with views of the burning bodies outside their windows and the smoke from burning flesh filling the air. The boat captain told us a few stories and one was of a widowed wife who threw herself on the burning pyre as her husband's body went up in flames.

Some beings are not cremated because they are already deemed to be purified and these include pregnant women, children younger than ten, sadhus, victims of snake ...

... is to bathe in the Ganges in the hopes of cleansing their sins. The second is to burn their dead on the banks and then let the river carry away the ashes. According to Hindu belief, if your body is burned this way then you are guaranteeing yourself a one way ticket straight to Nirvana. Because Hindus believe in reincarnation, Nirvana is not an easy place to get to. They think most people die and are reborn again and again in a process known as samsara. Depending on your ...

... needed but since things were still a bit tender he suggested I limit my movements for at least a day or two and that is where I stand as of this entry. Other than the initial discomfort of cauterization I feel fine though I'm still not entirely convinced that I didn't contract some kind of parasite and that is something I will certainly follow up on when I return to the U.S. (NOTE: my belief persisted about my parasite theory through my return to ...

... shade of the ramparts while i lingered getting all interested while I heard a squeal: "Perry!" I turned around to see Luc on the ground completely surrounded by teenage boys all giggling and pointing and Ooohs! and Ahhs! And "What is that?" They were all wondering what Suncream was and thougtht she was an alien!

Lucy is loved everywhere we go tho. Lots of Indian tourists love having their childrens photos taken with her while I hol ...

... log is weighed by a set of scales in order to fully calculate the cost of the funeral. Mourners stand by the pyre as it is lit (due to the limited space they don't have much choice) and non-mourning bystanders are asked to keep a respectable distance of several feet, although are still allowed to stand on the ghat. When we passed, the body of a young woman, swathed in saffron apart from the face, lay on a stretcher at an angle with her feet dipping into the holy water as her pyre was ...