Muscle beach and celebrity spotting on the Ganga
I was off to Varanasi that night but couldn’t get a direct train so first had to get about 3/4 of the way to Allahbad. A long night despite having a sleeper as most people around me weren’t too interesting in sleeping much. Arrived around 6am and begun a long search trying to get a train to Varanasi. Brought a ticket, leaving in 5 minutes platform 9. Took about 20mintues to find the platform of lugging my bag up and down stairs and of course no train, no signs and no one giving me a straight answer. I’d try ask one person and I’d get a crowd of about 50 people around me and none of them having a clue what I even wanted. So after an hour of walking back and forth around the station I finally ended up waiting with a French guy for the train which was apparently coming, and finally it did! Turned out to be a longer than expected trip, we started off on the a/c compartment with our general tickets and got kicked out after a couple of hours, pleading ignorance we ended up in the non a/c compartment and had a nice trip drinking chai and watching the interesting world of rural India out the window.
Arriving after lunch we split to go to our different hotels, as on different budgets. I somehow got scammed again and ended up at a hotel with a very similar name but definitely not the place I wanted. Not a bad place though just not on the river, but too tired to care by that stage.
Varanasi is one of the holiest cites in India along the banks of the holy river Ganga. Lining the the river are ghats, pretty much a big promenade with hundreds of steps where people wash clothes, bath, play crickets, hang out, sell tourists postcards and boat rides and burn bodies. My first walk along the river I quickly stumble upon a burning ghat and get the full explanation of the process. There’s 2 burning ghats that run 24/7, there’s bodies everywhere getting burnt and their ashes put in the river. Pregnant women, children, and holy men get chucked in without being burnt which makes for interesting surprises when taking a boat. It’s a bit surreal watching these cremations on big bonfires, around 10 at the same time at the big ghat. There’s all sorts of rituals associated with it and rules according to caste, there’s no tears or seemingly much sadness at all, an accepted part of life and having your ashes thrown in the Ganges is good because it ends your reincarnation cycle and you go straight to heaven, or wherever good Hindus go.
There are people bathing along in the river constantly and it is a bit like muscle beach with endless stretches of men (very few women and those there are washing in full saris) in underwear, very small underwear. A bit disturbing and needed to avert my eyes more than once! Ran into Khaled from the train and an American chick he’d met so we spent the evening watching a ceremony at the man ghat and dinner with some interesting live music
Spent a bit of time over the next 2 days getting lost in very small streets that led everywhere and nowhere, lots of walks up and down the river and somehow managed to miss Brad Pitt who spent the day cruising around! Talked to some Spanish guys who went and chatted to him, said he was just wandering around with 2 bodyguards compared to the over 100 person entourage for a Bollywood film star that was there last week! Had a typically Indian experience trying to send an email from a little internet cafe. All the power went off but computers were still running so kept typing away my long email, after 5 mins I asked if the lights were going to come back on soon.
“No ma’am, power cut, computers go for another…1minute maybe then turn off”
What!!! So just went to click send when they all shut down! Of course…..thanks for the warning…
My last morning I went on a early morning boat ride with a guy who organized things from the hotel, he took me to a few temples and then to a silk shop where I spent far too much money on silk scarves.I like going to visit all the temples in India because unlike the cathedrals in Europe there is actually people in them and stuff going on, Europe’s cathedrals all seem kind of dead where these places are full of people worshipping, playing music, eating, and hanging out, it’s a cool atmosphere. So after 2 nights I was off again another overnight train to Kolkata to meet up with a whole lot of people from home.
Tags: blogsherpa, ganges, India, Travel, Varanasi
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