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One more day to endure
Entry 3 of 13 | show all | print this entry |
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Up early, 5am, to take a boat ride along the ghats before the masses swarm. Very easy as the stairs to the boats are right outside the hotel.
Couldn't find the guy who we had had the boat ride with yesterday and had promissed to do it at 5am. Bt someone else knew about this and said that he was the stand in. We trusted him and we recognized it was teh same boat as the other guy had used and ths guy knew the timing etc. Also he looked sharp and dare I say it (relatively speaking) trust worthy.
Watched a poor old guy cut open his shin on the boat or something, only to be told by his fellow boaters that he was causing a drama. Felt sorry for him, but they did kind of help him patch it up.
Whent downstream this time, in the direction of the actual burning area etc. We ended up here and it was getting light by this time. Had the boat guys explain variosu things to me, and I as per usual quizzed him about things, to which he was very receptive and aswered enthusiastically.
One of the key things was that when teh body is burned, the sternum (for men) and pelvis (for women) dont burn so are then thrown into the river. Which we sadly witnesed a little to close for me and Ben's liking. As the guy in the burning area chucked a pelvis only 2 or 3 metres away from the edge of our boat. Naturally me and Ben scurried at the thought of getting splashed by toxic water.
Also another interesting point was that 5 types of dead bodies are not burned, but instead a rock tied to them and left to sink to the bottom (children, pregnant women, holy men, snake bite victims in commatative state and some other I forget).
He mentioned that a crocadile was spotted in the Ganges the other day, which kind of freaked us a bit.
Even watched the special holy man light a body, from the 500 year old burning flame (apparently that is the only flame that the burning can be initiated from).
Against mutterings from us, the boat guy insisted on waiting until this rather dodge holy-come-guide hopped over to our boat and without asking us, proceeded to give us a full blown lecture on the whole thing. We put up with it and then has hinted that people who visit give him as they please, including a thousand or two. me and Ben looked at each other and thought screw that. Not giving you a thousand or two, for 10 mins of yapping which we were not even asked permission for. So gave him like 100 or so. The guy hinted the fact that the woode that is used to burn the bodies is very expensive and it takes 3 hours or so to burn a single body i.e. very costly excersise (180 rupees per kg). Didn't change our viewpoints, so semi-muttering he wandered of to the next victims/tourists.
Ben commented that he would rather give it to a local Orphanage than hand it over to some bloke who will use it as beer money lol.
We headed back upstream to the Sita hotel, and watched various people praying, washing there teeth?!? And even four nutty Jap's having a full on bath in the Ganges a mere two or so ghats away from the burning section!
IRFS bike ride goes here...........
Dinner later that night, Amanda was not feeling too well and Ben wanted to stay on his antibiotics after the Kofta fiasco. Thankfully I am ok, but still decided to stick with a sweet rice dish called Kasmiri Byrani.
Said sad frewalls to Sanjay and the hotel owner and the sweet old man that works there and is hard of hearing. Amanda wanted to have a photo taken with him but he was too shy an kept scuttling away. Very nice man always greeted us with a smile and Namaste whenever he saw us.
Headed for the crazy train station with power outage in the foriegners section, which considering it was an upper class section was bti of a dive. Still survived and had another daring train trip, where Ben picked up his branded Indian rail hand towel!
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