In the belly of the beast
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2005
1
14
158
Trip End
Jul 21, 2007
Varanasi,
India
Friday, November 4, 2005
In many ways Varanasi typifies India. It's filthy, smelly, ridden with insects, overcrowded and full of rickshaw drivers and touts hassling you at every step 24/7
Another view from the boat
. At the same time it reverberates thrillingly with life almost 24 hours of the day, the people are colourful and vibrant in every way, be it in their character, their clothing or their intense religious fervour. Almost every day there is a raucous procession down towards the Ganga and the whole community is involved from the old to the young. You can feel a connection at every level of society. The sheer amount of shrines to the many different gods in the Hindu pantheon be they large temples next to the river or the tiniest shrine in between two shops indicates the massive importance of religion to the people. It's not as if they are there as tokens either; they are constantly adorned with flowers, incense, candles and offerings of food on a daily basis. One of the annoying things about all this is the Sadhus or supposedly wandering holy men who basically sit around high as kites and wait for a tourist to come and take a photo with them and then part with some backsheesh. It's like they think there bloody mickey mouse at disneyland or something, a shoddy mockery. We eventually got to our hotel which was the Yogi Lodge in Godaulia right in the labyrinthine heart of the old city, after being duped into spending a night at the NEW Yogi Lodge further out of town. You've gotta watch your back in this place! We had teamed up with a bonza couple called Skye and Ben who were travelling round India on their way to live in Skye's home town of Brisbane where they would be married. We had gotten to know each other pretty well on the 16 hour train journey from Agra, we taught them a card game and they taught us backgammon. Anyway we settled in the homely guesthouse and started to explore the place. The city was extremely mucky and on the night we got there the air was literally dense with insects next to the street lights. But put it this way, if you use the fact that the place is dirty as a detractor you would have to forget about the whole of India so we just kept our mouths closed and ignored it
Barber in Varanasi
. We decided to go with a recommendation from the bible and try the Yoga training centre just round the corner and were very happy with the result. The resident Yogi was Sunil who was a real character with a fun temperament and a loud full-on Basil Brush laugh. We went at 8 in the morning for a two hour sesh and were impressed with his instruction. He went through a lot of Pranayama (breathing control) and even some laughing therapy! He detailed the benefits of the different asanas as we went through: good for constipation, memory, organ function etc. We agreed to go back the following day and we knocked on his door at 5.30am as he had arranged a boat to take us out onto the Ganges to see the sunrise and all the people bathing and making morning Puja (prayer). It was spellbinding to watch the light fall on all the ancient Ghats and see the faithful getting a hose down in the holy water. This holy water by the way is mainly composed of shit. In yet another glaring contradiction crazily all the sewage of the city of Varanasi is pumped into the river and that along with the rotting limbs of unburned bodies makes it a really delightful dip. We gave it a miss but were assured by Sunil that he takes a regular constitutional, but goes to the middle where the water is cleaner. After our boat trip we had another 2 1/2 hours yoga which left us feeling brilliant and we all went back to the hotel with our fellow class mate Paul from Shropshire who spends all his time travelling as he owns a flat on Regent Street and lives off the rent. Lucky bastard. He also looks the spit of David Beckham and happens to be a really sound geezer so all in all he's got it pretty good. He's currently spending his yearly 100 hours being taught by Sunil and helped us out by recommending a good local restaurant where we got the best Thali (a stainless steel plate with a dollop of Aloo Ghobi (curried potato and cauliflower), Dhal, rice, chapati and poppadum) we had eaten
Bathers at Sunrise
. We walked down to the Manikarnika burning ghat the next day and were absolutely transfixed by the strangely factory like ceremony that sees the bodies burned and the ashes interred in the Ganges. The son of the person gets his head shaved at the top of the alley leading to the ghat and when the ceremony is completed inside the temple the pall bearers carry the body wrapped in an orange shroud, swiftly down the path on a bamboo stretcher. It is immersed in the river and then placed on one of the wooden pyres which has been paid for by weight by the family. He then lights a stick of kindling at the foot of the Shiva temple which overlooks the ghat and circles the body a number of times, touching the head at each circuit. He then sets the pyre alight and sits by watching the body reduce to ashes. It takes around three hours to burn although the chest bone on a man and the pelvis on a woman never fully reduces disintegrates. The whole process has a very matter of fact and unemotional feeling to it which is hard to understand. We were expecting a more solemn atmosphere but it only further highlights the contrast in our beliefs. It seems they are literally ticking the boxes and fulfilling the final process. There are actually hospices next to the burning ghats where people wait to die and we visited one to make a donation.
The rest of our time in Varanasi was spent arranging our onward trip to Kathmandu. We were hoping to fly but ended up taking a taxi all the way.
