Well, no, not really ... but it felt that way, in a Peter D Kramer 'better than well' sort of a sense. It was our first full day's exploration of the old city and the ramshackle way it tumbles down into the Ganges, and everything seemed right with India. And I found myself falling hard for the charms of this place, this strange, inverted, fanciful Venice of the Subcontinent.

Varansi is tiny boys with their eyes outlined in kohl flying paper kites that duck and weave on currents of air above the river. It is old men in the tiniest of undseemly underpants stretching and bathing by the river's edge like cats on a hot afternoon.

Magnificent, decayed buildings - elaborate as wedding vows and splendid in their decline - seem to perfectly offset the steady might of the river that they flank. The way their these palatial buildings (so over-the-top, so whimsical, and so ornate) thrust directly up to dizzying heights right beside the riverbanks is incredible.

I have to admit to having a moment down there thinking, 'everyone who can afford to should see this before they die.' I NEVER think that!

India presents human society as I've never quite seen it before. It's humbling and awful seeing people living in this degree of filth and in squalor, and yet at the same time your mind is registering beauty and awe.

We saw the ritual burning of corpses going on at one of the riverside ghats closest to our hotel. The bodies are carried down to the Ganges by outcasts called 'doms'. The dead are swathed in marigold-yellow fabric that glints like gold, their bodies borne along on narrow bamboo stretchers. As you walk in the streets of the old city, you'll find that you have to leap suddenly into a tiny crevice in order to let one of the many funereal processions squeeze past you in the tiny laneways. It's a strange sensation the first time you nearly get run down by a corpse.

The whole affair is conducted with a sombre kind of precision, but there's a strong element of the everyday to it as well. Far from being scary or ghoulish or repellent, I found myself watching and thinking, 'death happens everywhere - here being no exception - and this is one cultural way of dealing with the bodies left behind.'

After dipping the corpse in the sacred Ganges, it's set alight on large pyres of wood right near the water. Back behind all of this, there's a huge stockpile of logs, and the men whose job it is to ferry the wood from the pile to the pyres work with an intense focus - always moving, never stopping. There are always more bodies coming, and more kindling is needed. Death stops for no person.

Later that evening, we sit on the balcony of our hotel overlooking a vision of the Ganges that's taken on all the hues of late afternoon. The water is the most heart-stopping shade of mauve, like blue and pink fairyfloss spun into one confection. A rythmic beat of sitars and singing and plucked chords is belting out from downriver where a makeshift stage is lit up in a furious blaze of lights for a purification ritual performed by Brahmin.

Boats carrying up to 20 people are being rowed down river, each powered by a single man. Their oars make a lazy slushing sound in the water. Tiny burning offerings or candles are being sent out deep into the Ganges' centre. They sway slowly on the water's darkening surface - a heartbreaking symphony of fireflies on water that's now the colour of the dark side of the moon.