Varanasi Pics

View from our hotel

Groom on wedding day.

Last batch of postcards dispatched.

COW AT BURNING GHAT. MUZZLE?????

Pilgrims

Surreptitious shot of burning ghat

Some of the dozens of sadhus

Our hotel on right

Burning ghat from water

A mosque

Our boat captain

Varanasi Again

Varanasi is full of revered cows. They are everywhere, and where there are cows there is cow patties. Add all the dog patties and human patties then you have a big patty problem. It only takes one or two moments of inattention to the pavement in front of you for disaster to strike.

Despite all this stuff it is an amazing scene, a treat for all your senses.

We were warned about Varanasi in our guide book, about touts and various other unpleasantnesses. After Lucknow where we seemed to be the only foreign tourists, this place seems like a piece of cake. There is a good tourist infrastructure and it seems to be a pretty safe place to walk about. Our hotel is great and we are perched above a never ending drama being enacted on the banks of the holy ganges.

We must not forget that for a lot of India this holy place is where they come to die and a trip here to make an offering and wash yourself in the horribly polluted Ganges is a high light in their lives. bd

Well personally, I don't know how to start...Varanasi is a show stopper... a mind boggling, eyepopping, sensory exploding experience that leaves you wondering about the future of the world and your place in it. 

Varanasi is the longest continuously inhabited city in India and is one of  Hinduism's seven most holy cities. It must be one of the best places in the world for people watching. Rituals of life and death take place continuously and in public.  

A ghat is the name given to series of steps leading to the holy Ganges. It is here that pilgrims arrive to bath away their sins, offer puja (respect, prayers, offering), sip some of the holy water and take some home in a plastic decanter, meditate, wash clothes, do yoga, get or give a massage, sell flowers or religious paraphenalia, play cricket, wash and brush a cow or just sit around sipping tea.

Throw into the mix numerous sadhus or holy men with begging bowls, snake charmers, the touts and con artists, and the beggars....hundreds of beggars.. enough to make you cry...the sick, the old , the disabled, lepers without digits, amputees, children and mothers with newborns.

Some Hindus come here to die believing that they will achieve moksha or liberation from the cylcle of reincarnation. Families bring their dead here for cremation. This takes place at the burning ghats with strict rituals. It is a sobering site and a nonstop process.

Yes...then there are the sacred cows, the dogs and the monkeys and if you are like me, you end up feeling like a tiny speck in the universe and thinking there is no place like home and I am so fortunate to have been born in Canada.

We have been staying in the old part of the city, where most tourists stay and it feels old..a maze of disorienting alleys where you never know what you are going to run into. This morning we were sipping our lassis when a funeral procession went by, the body, swathed and draped with bright cloth, carried on a bamboo stretcher by outcasts called doms,down the alleyway to one of the burning ghats.

Why come here? If I suspend judgement, it is endlessly fascinating, sometimes magical and always mystical. Seldom have we seem so much devotion, so entertwined in daily life and religious belief. Tourists like us wander the streets watching, listening, and smelling life here. The colours of the saris, the repetitive beat of Indian music, mounds of marigold wreaths, the sweet overwhelming smell of incense,  the smoke from the burning ghats hanging in the air....time to get my karma in order?

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Those were our impressions in 2014 just after entering India for the first time. Things are a little different now. First of all it is spring summer season . It is bright and sunny and hot.When we were here last it was cold foggy and drizzly.Sadhus were around on our last trip but now there seems to be hundreds of them. A part of the old town has been demolished and they are building some monster visitor centre. It seems the town is a little cleaner but that might be due to the weather. Seems there is a very big police presence compared to the last visit. Political turmoil comes in waves and usually involves religious extremism and violence. Here in India the police forces don't pretend to be your friend. Being outnumbered a zillion to one, they try very hard to intimidate and instill fear in the masses.

Once again we are ensconced in our lovely guesthouse perched on the banks of the Ganges. We have an amazing view from our rooftop restaurant. I plan to chill out for a while before our return to Lucknow and I suspect difficult trip to the border and back to Nepal. For some reason we have yet to take a picture. Some will follow later.

Bodhgaya

This is ground zero of buddhism! This is where buddha reached enlightenment.  Trees play a big part in it. Buddha attained enlightenment under a bhodi tree. This tree was protected by some powerful personage. His jealous wife poisoned the tree and destroyed it. Some followers took a cutting and transplanted it to Sri Lanka. That tree thrived and cuttings from it were brought back to Bodhgaya many years later. Oh and buddha is a reincarnation of Shiva in the Hindu religion. So this place gets a lot of attention.

There is also a cave up in the hills where buddha refrained from food and drink for six years. A princess felt sorry and offered him some rice milk. He gave up his fast and went down the " MIDDLE WAY "

Then there is another tree that buddha meditated under that is still alive. The authorities say this tree is 2006 years old.

Train Travel

It is a short 48 hours since my last post from Rishakesh.  Since then we had our last drive with Anil. Dropped into Delhi overnight and then took a twenty two hour train ride to Gaya and then to the ground zero of Bhuddhism, Bodhaya. This is where Bhuddha attained enlightenment under a bhodi tree.
Anil thought getting a train would be super easy. He talked to one of his travel agent friends and came up with some proposed tickets for 8000 rupees. Thank God that all fell through. There happens to be a big Hindu festival at Allalabad where five million or so pilgrims congregate on the banks of the Ganges. This puts a tiny bit of pressure on the transportation system.
We went to the tourist office at the train station and and a very gruff bureaucrat explained our options were thin to none. Then abruptly he said " I book you sleeper class, leaves at six thirty from Anand Vihar, twenty kilometers away. I save you lots of money. Buy your wife something nice! That will be 1410 rupees for both of you. Now go pay at other desk." With those ominous/ reassuring words we were off.
The next morning we lurched out of our hotel room at 0430 hr. A roving tuk tuk driver spotted us and we were off like the Indianopolis 500. The streets were uncongested so he could really wind up the rpms.
We arrived at another monster railway station and our first adventure in sleeper class began.
Sleeper class is one step higher than unreserved general class. In unreserved general class you see mad rushes to the doors and fights breaking out as people try to secure a seat or patch of floor.
Sleeper class sort of has reserved seating. Though the system breaks down as the train progresses and more people join the train. As a general rule almost no one speaks any English. The seats are hardish benches. There are options to fold down sleeping platforms.  Things are definitely more grubby and run down. The bathrooms get worse and worse. One nice option is that the windows open though there is a stout set of bars over them. When the windows are closed the view is either very murky or non existent.

As we clacked along from one station to another, more and more passengers boarded and started crowding on to our bench seats.For a few hours it was definitely uncomfortable. The bench seat seemed to be boring into my ass and it was becoming obvious that that we were falling hours behind schedule.
Thank God we had a smart phone and gmaps so at least we had an idea where we were. Most of the stations have sign posts in Hindi so without the gmaps things would be a lot more stressful.
We pulled into Gaya Junction about 0200 am,  five hours late. A tuk tuk driver seeing our dishevelled state negotiated a hefty fare of seven Canadian for the 15 kilometer trip to Bodghaya.
We arrived at our hotel which had a reception area the size of the Whitehorse airport terminal but no reception staff. There were a couple bodies sleeping on the couch. They promptly ignored us and went back to sleep. I called the hotel number and got a person on the end who gave me a torrent of instructions that I could not understand. I gave the phone to one of the sleeping bodies who happened to be the cook. He got up and rooted around for awhile until he found a key. With key in hand we headed up to our room which has some faults but for the most part most things work, like the twenty or so lights and switches.
I am not exaggerating when I say you could throw a frisbee a fair distance in this room. Any ways after four or five hours sleep we headed out to find some food and decent coffee and were wildly successful on both counts.

Catching Up

We revisited the rock garden in Chandigargh. This was created by Nek Chand who used recycled materials from a demolished city to create statues on a vacant lot. City officials were on the verge of evicting him and destroying his creations when someone took a closer look and came to their senses. Now it stretches over a square kilometer and gets hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.

In Haridwar  pilgrims are bathing in the holy Ganges. After they do their ablutions  and pujas they scoop up a few gallons of the holy water and start walking back to their home towns, sometimes hundreds of kilometers away. While we were there we got caught in a terrific thunder and rain storm. We huddled under a tarp with about forty pilgrims but still managed to get quite soaked.

Rishikesh  is upstream about thirty kilometers. It is also a holy place but is also a hangout for western tourists. Some are seeking spiritual enlightenment. Others are there for yoga and healing but most are just hanging out enjoying the scene.

For those lucky individuals on our postcard list, rest assured they are on the way and should arrive sometime in the next year.

Visiting Anil's Family

For some strange reason Anil's family seemed pleased as punch to be hosting these not so strange strangers. Actually we had visited this family two years ago.
Ritika the daughter was tasked with entertaining us for a few hours. We hopped on the local bus and went to the nearest big town. Here we met her uncle and his family. Her uncle is a hindu priest and was so happy to see us he filmed the whole occasion and posted it on Facebook. As it was getting dark Ritika took us to the local mountain forest where we groped around to the top using the flashlights on our phone. Later we were told it is quite dangerous at night due to leopards.

Barot

Barot is a high mountain valley. By Indian standards it is clean, quiet and peaceful. We checked into a pretty good cheap hotel.

 Barot's main claim to fame is it is home to India's first hydro electric project constructed when the British still ruled India. It continues to pump out power to the state of Punjab.

It is a great place to just walk around. On our morning walk we went to a waterfall and discovered a small water powered flour mill. There was this nice simple guy lying asleep in the open doorway of the mill. Our guide nudged him with his foot and told him to make way for the tourists. After he regained his senses somewhat, he seemed pleased to be hosting these strange dignitaries. He even wanted to clean up a bit for the mandatory picture shoot.