Varanasi - The Wild Child of India (I hope)

Until I met Varansi, I wondered what all the fuss had been about.  Both Delhi and Khajuraho had been very similar to other developing nations I had been in once you  leave the resort scene -- mexico, jamaica, cuba -  Varanasi is a pilgrimage town, the holiest place for Hindus - everything is subservient to the search for the ecstatic.  That includes the following: any sense of civic administration, cleanliness, any apparent help for the poor, animal husbandry and this curious refusal to believe that the Ganges is polluted.

Picture this: we are nice safe tourists.  Someone has picked us up at the airport and suddenly we arrive in the environs of Varanasi.  We nearly hit any of the following including cows and children whose families apparently live their lives on the street.  I will say that this first glimpse was a godsend as it allowed me to observe without being part of the action.

Our guide through Varanasi was a man named Bramod, a lawyer and human rights expert of sorts, who was cheerfully unaware of the human rights violations going on in the city of his birth. As with everyone we met in Varanasi and also in Khadjuraho he was deeply spiritual and likely only questioned the things he could change which would be few. 

In Varanasi, there is an evening ceremony that closes off the day starting at around 6:30 -- the whole town closes up by 9:00pm likely because you are wakened at 5 or so by the action on the street.  In the morning, people go down to the very obviously dirty Ganges and bathe.  But back to the evening ceremony.

We arrived late, courtesy of jet air which cannot run a plane on time, so it was 6pm and we were tired but Bramod felt it was vital that we see the evening ceremony so we all climbed into rickshaws - yes rickshaws - and careened down the street back through the old town with cows, water buffaloes, children, other pilgrims coming at us at a furious pace -- we just missed them each time -- to get to the evening ceremony. 

Now just before I go on, I want to say a word about driving in Varanasi and very likely the rest of India.  Don't do it.  It is a specialized skill and only someone with a great deal of practice and sheer guts should do it. I have a new respect for drivers.  Anyone driving in Canada after driving here would be bored.

Bramod was right.  The evening ceremony was wonderful and colourful and we were happy not to have missed it.  I will post some pictures in the next posting.

Our hotel was right on the river, a non-traditional luxury hotel.  Non-traditional was right between the electricals failing, the towels and sheets that had been washed on the laundryman's ghat (you can tell they were washed on a stone because of the gray and the stress on the fabric).

I would not have missed any of it for the world.  Once we got our feet, Varansi proved endlessly fascinating - I could do a whole posting just on the funeral pyres.  Look for Cameron's upcoming post about Babu the riverboat bandit.