It's hard to recall, tucked up in bed with jarmies on, cup of sencha cradled in hands for warmth, with a flipping gale blowing outside, what 45-50 degrees C feels like. But put it this way - It drains you, completely. And stresses you. Your brain refuses to process much information, other than 'fuck it's hot, fuck it's hot.' And you have to sit down in the shade a lot, drinking cold drinks. So things take longer than they normally would do.
We sweatily headed to breakfast at a recommended establishment. A textbook tourist jaunt, with pillows to sit on, Prem Joshua playing in the background, fans in your face and an extensive multi cuisine menu. The chaps running the place were hospitable, and they did well to supply us with our fuel for the morning. One quite amazing event occurred. I saw a female in the corner of the room, and much to my surprise it was someone i had met about 2 years earlier, in Budapest. We got on well, and stayed in contact for a bit after meeting in BP, but that died. But lo and behold, here she was. In India. Amazing. Jacy was her name-o. And probably still is - I'll ask her when i see her again, in a bus stop in Shanghai.
So, Varanasi. 'Tis a city of Ghats. Many a Ghat. SO MANY GHATS. Ghats here, Ghats there. GHATS GHATS GHATS GHATS.
So, what's a ghat? Confusingly enough, it can mean a few things. The first contact with ghats came when in South East India. Travelling the Eastern Ghats. And they were talking about using a ghat to get to another town. But then outside a temple, they were talking about ghats again, and pointing to some steps to the water. My brain didn't know what was going on, so it just shrugged and pretended it did.
In the first case it was just the name of a mountain range - the Eastern and Western Ghats. Secondly, a mountain pass can be called a ghat. And thirdly, a set of steps leading to a body of water is also called a ghat. The third option is what we're dealing with in Varanasi.
Many things happen on Ghats. Cleaning, clothes washing, praying, worshipping, boating, cremation, contemplating, music playing, cricketing, meditating, kiting, yoga-ing, chai drinking, pocket picking, post card selling, etc-ing. It's a hive of activity along the 100ish ghats, that cover 3-4 km along the Ganges in Varanasi. And quite spectacular it is too. Eye opening. Here are some ghat based larks -
As soon as you penetrate the warren of the old town, your bearings get well'n'truly lost. Well ours did. We ended up some 3 km away from where we were meant to be at one point, and some poor bicycle rickshaw took us all three back after much persuading. We tipped him heavily though, and i think he relished the challenge.
If we didn't end up lost whilst navigating the wonderfully chaotic back streets, we inevitably found ourselves at the Manikarnika Ghat. Even if we began our journey on the other side of town some portal would transport us there, and we would emerge into the blistering sun, squinting, confused.
The Manikarnika Ghat is the main cremation ghat. A constant stream of bodies are carried down the Ghat by loved ones. They are dropped onto previously haggled piles of wood, that have been calculated with weight and body fat in mind (we were informed that cremation is a complicated procedure, and knowing how much wood and oil is needed, and how to set up the wood and take other factors into account such as wind and heat of day etc takes generations of experience) before the eternal flame (that occasionally goes out) is walked 5 times round the body and the tinder grasses set alight before the added fragrant oils take over, and the body fat starts rendering, and the whole lot goes up in a whoomph. It takes roughly 300 kg of wood per pyre, and they cremate 100+ ex-people a day on the Manikarnika Ghat alone (there are other burning ghats). So as you can imagine, that is ALOT OF WOOD. It piles up around the ghat, where people peruse which they would like to use for their loved ones. The rich folk would use at least a small percentage of sandal wood or other expensive timber, whilst the others are left with what ever they can afford.
They do not allow the burning of children, pregnant ladies, lepers or people that have died from cobra bites. Instead they will tie a block of stone to them, and row out about 100 metres into the Ganges, and dump them over the side of the boat. That took our eye-spy dead person count up from 1 to 47 over the space of about 2 hours.
To take our minds back to a slightly less bizarre place, a very horny bull came stumbling down the ghat and his testosterone fuelled advances on an uninterested cow were duly noted, and a monkey started very successfully aggravating a dog. Then i slipped on a sloppy cow turd, nearly going arse over tit.
So as you can imagine, with all this death being dumped into the Ganges at Varanasi, and with the added pollution of millions upon millions of us dirty humans living/working along it, the river ain't that clean. To quote Wikipedia -
-Along the stretch of terraced bathing ghats in the holy city of Varanasi, the water of the Ganges is a brown soup of excrement and industrial effluents. The water there contains 60,000 faecal coliform bacteria per 100 ml, 120 times the official limit of 500 faecal coliforms/100ml that is not considered safe for bathing.
Mmmmm, faecal coliforms.
And it is by no means the worlds dirtiest river either.
But everyone there bathes in, washes their clothes in and drinks from this holy waterway. There is some method in their madness - amongst the filth in the river, bacteriophages are carried. These miraculous bacteriophages parasitise deadly bacteria such as cholera and dysentery, leaving the water slightly less harmful. Still wouldn't catch us taking a glug though, no matter how holy it is.
Varanasi, or Banaras, is the Hindu capital of the world. Though it is sacred for Buddhists and Jains also. Consequently it is a city of temples and worship. Cows wander the labyrinthine alleyways, whilst monkeys play above you. It also likes its silk. So you will be constantly badgered until you buy a silk scarf or 23. Like all major Indian tourist hot spots, it is filthy and incredible. Quite a sight. Can you imagine bringing stories and sketches of somewhere like this back to Blighty back in them olden days?…? -
No wonder we wanted it for our own.
After wandering around a bit more, seeing all sorts of eye opening whotsits, we headed back for a siesta - Just bringing a slice of Mediterranean culture to India. Got up to date on the ICL. Before heading out again as the sun was setting.
At the Dashaswamedh Ghat, which is the main ghat in Banaras, there is a ceremony every evening. I would love to tell you what this consists of, apart from noise and fire, but our attentions were taken away by meeting a lovely girl called Moni. (pat filmed a bit though, so take from it what you will-)
She lives on the main ghat, without a home or father, and makes her living selling postcards for 7 rupees (10p).
She sat next to us, put her pile of postcards down and said-
'i saw you this morning, but you were walking soooo fast i couldn't keep up.'
as if she knew who we were and we knew who she was. And went on as if there wasn't any point in beating around the bush, we were friends, and that was that.
We talked for a long while, and met with her mother, with whom we had a disjointed natter.
At 10 years old (she thinks) her dream is to travel and to stay with everyone she knows around the world (she keeps a little book of phone numbers of all the tourists she has met). She can't afford regular schooling, so cannot read and write, but her intelligence is obvious. From her amazing language skills to her quick wittedness. Getting a passport will be nigh on impossible, and raising the money practically a pipe dream. But for some reason, you know that she will do it.
Everybody knew her on the ghat. So she received gifts of chai (which she wasn't that fond of) and other little nibbles. Seemed that people were looking out for each other (A trait that generally decreases as wealth increases).
Quite an inspirational thing she is, something that is rare to find in people. So when you do see it in someone, it makes quite the impact. We hope she is well.
After everything had died down on the Dashaswamedh Ghat, we dined next to a mental procession, headed hotelwards and fell asleep watching the cricket.
