Varanasi

Varanasi is one of India holiest cities, it is also one of the oldest living cities in the world. This is the most fascinating city I have ever been to...words can't do it justice. This place is an overload to the senses. Just walking down the maze like labyrinth of streets you are dodging stray cows, cow patties, goats, stray dogs, fighting monkeys, cricket balls from playing children, motorbikes, hundreds of people, and funeral processions! Everything is coming at you at once...you look down to avoid a goat and run head on into a cow or a motorcycle! We took a night train from Delhi and arrived at 8am...we somehow found our driver(miracle in the zoo that was the Varanasi train station!) and with the help of a few dozen men who pushed the car to get it started headed into the heart of town....complete with 100 meters of driving the wrong way down a road and honking the horn as cars, cows and motorbikes parted like the red seas! The city of Varanasi is to Hindus as Mecca is to Muslims or the Vatican is to Catholics: Once in every lifetime an observant Hindu hopes to make a pilgrimage to the holy city of Varanasi and many spend a lifetime planning and saving for the visit. Varanasi is a city where many people come to die. It is said to die here and have your body cremated and ashes spread into the Ganges river will liberate you from the endless cycle of birth-death and re-birth. More than 1,000,000 pilgrims visit the city each year. Some come to wash away sickness and sin in the sacred Ganges River...others bring their dead to be burned...still others come to live their last days here. There are hospices behind where they burn the bodies where people live while they wait to die...you only have 24 hours from death until you have to be burned. Me and Sue walked over to the burning ghats this morning...they cremate 2-300 bodies here every day, 24 hours a day right on the steps that lead into the river. The oldest son of the dead person is the one who lights the fire...before hand he has to have his head shaved, they rub he body with oils, wrap it in a shroud (colorful red for women white for men) and the family carries the body through the streets to the ghats(all of this in front of you and a crowd of family members)....The family men all chant a sing song prayer at the top of their lungs as they carry the body through the streets, you can hear them coming and have to stand out of the way fast as the whole group of mourners streams through the streets chanting and carrying the body of their loved one(family women not allowed as in the past they have been known to throw themselves onto the burning body of their loved ones). Once they get to the ghats they have to bath the body in the river which purifies it then the oldest son starts the fire and the body is placed on it covered by more wood(sandalwood and other fragrant wood used so you cannot smell burning flesh). After 3 hours when the body is completely burned the ashes are put in the river where people sift through the water/ashes looking for any jewelry from the corpse. We watched for about an hour and they had a constant stream of bodies coming in and going out with 8-10 cremations going on at any given time in various stages(Sorry photography NOT allowed)....Cows would come walking up mid cremation and start eating the clothing of the burning body. The Ganges river runs through Varanasi. Each ghat(a series of steps leading down into the river) has a different meaning and purpose, some are for bathing, some are for washing your laundry, some are for washing your buffalo's and a few are reserved for cremating the dearly departed. Some of the bodies of those that are already considered pure such as babies, pregnant women and holy men are laid to rest directly into the river with rocks to weigh them down....and also anyone killed by a snake bite is set adrift on banana trees in hope they will come back to life. Life on the banks of the Ganga begins before dawn when thousands of pilgrims - men, women and children - come down to the river to wait for the rising sun when immersion in the sacred river will cleanse them of their sufferings and wash their sins away. The most suitable time for this ritual is at the time of sunrise, at this time besides bathing devotees also offer prayers to the sun. People bath in the river all day though...you can watch them all up and down the river cleaning them self in pubic with no modesty! Saw a lot of naked indian men today!

Interesting fact about the Ganges river....the same river used by roughly 60000 people each day to bath and wash clothes...it is so heavily polluted that the water is septic(meaning no dissolved oxygen exists)। In tests it has 1.5 million fecal coliform bacteria per 100ml of water( to be safe for bathing this number should be less than 100). Tonight we are going down to the river at 18:30 to watch the evening ceremonies and tomorrow morning we are up at 5:30 to take a boat ride up and down the river at dawn to watch the peak of the action!