Varanasi

The train from Lucknow to Varanasi

For more “experience travel” and because of a lack of availability of any other seats, we travel from Lucknow to Varanasi in unair-conditioned sleeper class.

We anticipate it will be hot and crowded but we are not expecting there to be no room in the seats that we have actually booked!

First things first though, we cause a scene at the train station, just by being on the platform and after a large circle forms around us, we are ushered away by the tourist police to a little office, to wait away from prying eyes. I was disappointed as I am enjoying watching Roger talk about cricket in the limited way that he can but the tourist police insist.

When the train arrives and we find our carriage, it seems that there are already people in our seats. In fact, I think there are already twice as many people as seats before we turn up.

There is a big kerfuffle as people whack the poor sleeping passengers who have taken refuge on the empty bunks above and help us find space for our luggage which is clearly about 500% more than any Indian traveller. We make ourselves as comfortable as possible in the small space that we are allocated. We should, in theory, have a bunk each to ourselves but the best that we can do is to hoist Louie and Jasper up to the top bunks with all of our luggage and sit wedged between the other passengers down below who are clearly amused by our arrival.

A couple of hours into the trip, the heat becomes quite unbearable and it is all we can do to sit quietly and conserve energy and hope the trip will soon be over.

I thought getting off the ferry in Thailand was stressful, but here on arrival in Varanasi, people start flooding on to the train before we get a chance to hop off and we are wedged in between two opposing forces, pushing from each way. Some seem to be trying to climb over the top of us because we’re not moving. In fact, we’re totally lodged in one place and I start to experience the beginning of a panic attack.

Luckily, a nice guy who we’ve shared a few chais with on the way, is ahead of us and sees that we’re in trouble and starts trying to control the flow of people onto the train at one end.

There are no queues in India. There are just large forward-moving masses. Even when we queued at the train ticket booth, people came right up the the counter when we were being served and pushed us to the side as we were obviously not being pushy enough. Similarly there is no waiting in traffic. Just beeping until you can move forward a fraction and pull in front of someone else.

I liken it to the roadworks scenario on the road from Northland into Auckland. There’ll be a huge queue of people waiting in the left hand lane of the passing lane knowing that the lane is merging because of an obstruction further ahead. Roger will cruise up the outside lane past all of the waiting traffic (some of them do the fingers).
I’ll wait at the end of the queue and take my turn.
I’d be the one that would probably perish first, in India.

The cows in the cities of India eat predominantly rubbish, paper and food scraps. The Udaipur cows grazed from piles of lake weed mixed with snails and non-organic debris. This lucky cow has chanced upon some greenery.

This cow has obviously recently given birth just outside the guest-house. The calf is covered in flies.

The old city of Varanasi, concentrated around the ghats that lead down to the river Ganga, is a maze of tiny little streets where only the occasional motorbike travels. So after getting two tuk Tuks from the station, we walk our gear for the last part of the journey. Luckily, the guest house has sent a few helpers as we’re all suffering from the heat and at least when we’re watching our bags disappear into the distance on somebody else’s back,we have an excuse to rush through the hoards of boatmen, tuk tuk drivers and street sellers without stopping.
The Ganpati Guesthouse is right in the edge of the Ganga. We’ve splashed out for a balcony so we can watch what’s happening on the river. There’s a lot to see.
There are bullocks cooling off like hippos with their ears and snouts poking out.
There are Brahman and Sadhus wandering up and down. There are people washing, swimming and doing their laundry. There are wary travellers being relentlessly pursued by guides…….. and there is ash, lots of it.
It floats through the air in a smoky haze and settles all over everything in a fine brown coating.

The Ganpati Guest house

After some time spent reducing our overall body temperatures in the air conditioning and having dinner on the roof, we set out for a walk.

Immediately we have a walking companion. He wants to take us to the burning ghat. Apparently ‘burning is learning’.
We are only human and all feel curious to see the cremation ghat but the atmosphere is pretty strange and there is the sense of being a spectator at someone else’s funeral.

There is a total lack of Indian women at the burning ghat. Apparently, women are forbidden from attending cremations as their tears will prevent the soul from breaking the cycle of reincarnation (achieving Moksha) which is why everyone wants to have their ashes cast into the Ganga in the first place. Other sources report that women are too weak of heart to witness a cremation.

It’s like one of those windy BBQ’s where the smoke follows you, no matter where you stand. It’s all we can do not to pull out a pack of marshmallows and the guitar……….

But in all seriousness, it is uncomfortable. The smoke is overwhelming, the smells are strange, the leering guides and hawkers who congregate around the ghat to extort money from tourists for the cost of wood for the cremations, makes the whole thing seem like a spectacle and I can’t help feeling that by having visited ourselves, we are adding to the show.

The next day we catch up on a bit of work and spend a quiet day recouping, which when we have five days in a place, is a first day habit. We explore the alleyways around the guest-house for a while and come across a group of kids fixing a bike with sellotape.

 

We can smell this goat from our balcony!

The evening Puja Ceremony on the Ganga is a daily occurrence and hundreds of people gather at Dashashwamedha ghat, just a few hundred metres from our guesthouse.

At lunchtime, we met a Canadian family who have a 12 year old boy, the first English-speaking child we have met on our trip.

Together we rent a boat and boatman to take us out on the river.

As is obviously a custom with a Ganga boat trip, we head first to the burning ghat.

From the boat we can watch from a respectful distance and appreciate the beauty of the ceremony. First the washing of the wrapped and garland-covered body in the river, then the pouring of holy Ganga water into the mouth and finally, the unwrapping of the body down to a simple white cloth and the placing of the body on the pyre.

The sheer volume of wood, stacked and ready for the 200 plus cremations that happen here everyday, is staggering. All of that wood, a lot of it hard wood, has to come from somewhere. The practice of cremation and the casting of the ashes and remains of the body into the Ganga, barely seems sustainable.

What is truly amazing about the Puja Ceremony is the number of Hindu tourists who have come here to be on (or in) the Ganga. There are hundreds of boats heading out from sunset to gather in front of the Dashashwamedha Ghat to witness the ceremony. Many of them have plastic bottles and are gathering the water from the Ganga to take home. We are one boat of Western tourists amongst dozens of boats of Indian tourists who all want to shake hands. Babies are passed over and photos are taken.

Boys jump from boat to boat selling floating offerings with flowers and a candle, to light and launch into the river.

The sheer volume of offerings placed into the river each day, creates an enormous volume of rubbish. About half of the floating saucers are made from foil. The others are made from leaves and presumably  Strewn along the banks of the Ganga are hundreds of garlands and fabric, discarded from the bodies before they are cremated. Clay pots, once containing ashes, lay broken everywhere and from time to time a swaddled bundle, possibly an animal or a baby, drifts along the river or sits caught amongst other piles of rubbish.

The desire for people to wash and drink from the river is hard to comprehend. The belief that the Ganga is purifying and can indeed purify itself, seems to override the logic that drinking what appears to be a toxic soup, may actually be quite harmful. Our boatman takes a swig just to make a point. (My stomach quietly turns but I try to look suitably reverant towards mother Ganaga.).

The Puja ceremony is very beautiful. In fact, there are two happening simultaneously. To one side are seven priests and the other side are five, who hold flaming lamps which they move in time like a beautiful dance. There is a continuous ringing of bells and from each Ghat, beautiful meditative tablah music.

There are moments on our trip where it feels as if we’ve dropped a couple of tabs of acid and gone back to ‘The Gathering’ circa 1998. This is one of those times, but 100 times cooler as it’s actually all happening and we’re in the very centre of it.

We have a peculiar timing in our family where we don’t manage to get out to do anything until the very hottest part of the day. Today is no exception as we head off for a walk along the Ghat in the opposite direction. It is blisteringly hot and there is no shade on the hot concrete steps that line the river. Having been in India now for almost a month, we are a little immune to the requests from holy men for photos and blessings. It is good to have a zoom lens in order to surreptitiously take photos without dishing out any cash. Children holding naked babies are harder to ignore.

We walk for as long as we can bear it before almost collapsing and finding a boat with a shade to take us back down the river to where we started. It is over 45 degrees today with clear skies.

It is so interesting to watch the goings on from the boat.

Whole loads of commercial laundry are washed and dried next to the river. I’m hoping this is not where our guesthouse laundry is sent.

Later that day I hang out a bit of washing myself, on the balcony, but by the time I bring it in and give it a shake, it is so full of ash that I put it quietly into a bag to wash respectfully at a later time.

No amount of soap will get you clean if you rinse off in the Ganga afterwards.

In the alleyway outside the guest-house are a gaggle of children who we meet the next day. They seem to be spurred on by a handsome 14 year old who nudges the cute little ones who say ” Hello Chok-a lit. Hello chok-a-lit”.

One of the hard parts of travelling for the kids, is seeing all the stray animals, some of which live on piles of rubbish and are clearly very sick and very hot.

This little puppy seems to live outside the guest-house and is very sweet. Apparently she is called Ganga. I think she’s dying.

We head off for a bit of alleyway exploring and pick up a bit of chocolate on the way. When we return, the kids are waiting for us and we become involved in a spirited game of ‘throw the ball at the guest-house roof’. Well, we watch and probably rark them up by taking photos and shouting “yippee”. When we pull out the chocolate there are suddenly 15 children. We are ushered further down the alley to meet and hold a tiny baby and dish out the chocolate to a select few, chosen by the charismatic 14-year-old.

There is a lot of shouting and the kids are getting unruly and hitting each other and us too.

Suddenly the guest-house boss comes out and reprimands us all for causing a ruckus. He explains, inside, that these are children but they are not (whatever that means; I assume he’s talking about the savvy 14-year-old cum chocolate Mafia boss), that these people can never be helped no matter what we do and that the father will drink away any money we give them. We feel sad. I thought we were having a good time with our new mates.

Jasper took these

We have lunch with people who like us for more than our chocolate, our new friends from Canada, Vern, Carolyn and their son Cooper.

They are also travelling for the year and have even been to Antarctica from the bottom of South America. Cue envious sounds from our children who are only going to 15 countries!!

For the next couple of days, we are almost like a normal family, inviting our friend Cooper round for a play during the heat of the day when we all need to be inside and having dinner with another family.

It seems that all we have the energy to do in the heat, is right outside the door anyway. There is even Yoga just up the alleyway. It seems ironic to be doing yoga on our third-to-last day in India. I of course imagined that I would be doing a full Utripada Padma Sirasana pose by now and would be brown and slightly wizened, with a look of long-term (but attractive) emaciation from amoebic dysentery.

I am, thankfully, about the healthiest person that ever left India, although I have lost the unnaturally brown glow I arrived with from Thailand because I’ve had to dress modestly and haven’t gadded about in a bikini for some time. I am also incredibly stiff and unfit and can feel my joints seizing up every time I hoist on my pack.

Vern, Carolyn, Stella (for whom this is a first yoga class ever) and I (who haven’t done yoga since leaving our home above the yoga school in the Tai Chi building in Saint Benedicts Street 14 years ago), head to the yoga school in the alley which is a tiny room on the 3^rd floor of a tiny building. The teacher is a student devotee from Australia. Funny really, to come all this way to practice yoga with a guru and find a cosmic Australian.

The two-hour session is extremely therapeutic (who would have thought) and I wondered why I hadn’t thought of doing some stretching in the 3 months prior.

Back in our room, Louie has been feeding the monkeys cornflakes and we have a slightly rabid monkey visitor sliding its tongue up and down the window.

In the back alleys

Hipster Holyman

No trumpets?

Wherever you go, you can find your way back to the ghat fairly easily.

I love goats. We had a goat farm when I was 5 years old. I could photograph them all day.

The next morning, we are up at 5am to see the sunrise on the Ganga.

It is at dawn that people come down to the river to cleanse and wash and make their offerings.

There are also swimming lessons and a few local yoga classes.

The air is particularly grey and ashy this morning and it even rains for the first time in weeks but we get a glimpse of the sun.

Today there are just a few people gathered and on the way past, we see a big game of cricket on the steps, with full amplified commentary.

I love the ingenuity and determination of some of the Indian kids. This guy has built himself a boat out of polystyrene, some wooden boards and an old sail and makes and sells the flower candle offerings on the Ganga.

We finish at sunset by releasing our little floating offerings into the Ganga. I make a wish for a harmonious family, but the candle blows out as it floats away. Oh well.

Leaving Varanasi

Our favourite Varanasi dog.

The next morning, we are up early to make the walk out of the old city to the taxi which will take us to the airport, to get back to Delhi in order to fly out to Kathmandu before our visa expires later in the day.

Varanasi airport is the flashest place we’ve been in India so far and Delhi airport even more so.

We spend the customary half an hour flying around in circles above Delhi before landing and then have a 7 hour wait for our flight to Kathmandu which we spend soaking up the sterilized atmosphere free of hawkers and people asking for money and ordering from Pizza Hut at the airport food hall. There is a moment of tension when the collective contents of our bags, including a large pair of scissors in Stella’s carry on and a large collection of miscellaneous electrical wiring from Roger’s, cause a security alert at the x-ray machine.

The flight to Kathmandu is only 1.5 hours and while we are hoping to see the Himalayas, it is dark when we arrive.

The airport is refreshingly small and intimate and we wander around as if we’ve just arrived in Rarotonga, filling out Visa applications and making jokes about lack of airport security.

We will miss India but it’s been hot and exhausting and we’re looking forward to a change.