2019 India – Varanasi
12th January 2019
The drive from the airport to Varanasi was uneventful until we reached the outskirts when all hell broke loose. It was a two-lane road with solid traffic. Drivers of every single vehicle were sounding their horns non-stop and mopeds kept cutting in front of us so our driver was constantly hitting the brakes. It took an hour to go just a few miles and it wasn’t until we got to the hotel that Federika told me she had been on the verge of suggesting we abandoned Varanasi and went back to the airport. I would have agreed, as apart from the journey being so bad, it didn’t look like a very nice place anyway. I realised later that it was more that we hadn’t adjusted to India yet. Once inside our hotel room with its relative peace, everything seemed much brighter, which was ironic because our room was quite dark. It was a lovely little boutique hotel called Granny’s Inn rated very highly on Booking.com, probably because it was incredibly cheap and was owned by a real-life granny.
It was a family-run hotel and every morning everyone sat around a large table and ate a breakfast prepared by Granny herself. At the head of the table was her son who had a stroke at a very young age which had left him disabled. He was very keen to communicate with everyone but it wasn’t easy as he kept repeating the same questions so it made answering a little pointless. It was a lovely family who took a lot of pride in their hotel which was beautifully decorated and had little ornaments in every corner. We had a giant padlock on our door like the kind you would use in a castle so there was certainly no chance of taking that home by mistake.
After lunch and my customary 20-minute siesta, we took a casual stroll down to the Ganges River where we had arranged to meet someone for our Sunset Boat Tour, something we were both looking forward to. Walking towards the river it was hard to believe possible but the road got even more congested as due to there being no pavements, pedestrians were mixed up with the traffic. We walked shoulder to shoulder with other pedestrians as every conceivable form of transport tried to push past us. On two occasions the strap of my rucksack got caught up in a passing rickshaw so I had to run alongside it until I got untangled. 
There were two narrow lanes on either side of the road with a barrier in between. It got worse when everything merged into one lane because a cow was lying on the road leaning up against the barrier. It was oblivious to its surroundings and just lay there casually chewing the cud like it was sitting in a field in the countryside. 
The final 100 metres before reaching the river was a solid line of women sitting on the floor begging with children on their laps.
Our first sight of the mighty Ganges River was breathtaking. There was a large area where people were putting out hundreds of chairs in preparation for the famous Ganges Aarti Ceremony, a religious and spiritual ceremony performed every night by the river’s edge. We met our guide and he walked us to a long boat with the man who would row us. We rowed slowly upstream while the guide gave us an excellent commentary explaining everything there was to know about the Ganges.
After the noise and chaos of the roads, the river was surreal with a mist and a chill in the air. The river must have been very cold but there were still lots of people washing themselves in the water by the edge. Some areas were used as commercial laundries with dozens of men and women standing in the river smashing clothes and sheets against rocks. Hung up against the buildings was a sea of sheets hanging out to dry although heaven knows how that would happen when there was no wind or sun.
We turned and rowed downstream going past where we saw lots of small fires with people gathered on the banks of the river. This was Varanasi’s biggest claim to fame, the place where Hindus hoped to die and be cremated. The alternative was to die somewhere else and run the risk of being born again. In the past, bodies were put on rafts and cremated on the river but I expect health and safety had something to say about that and insisted it was done on funeral pyres by the river’s edge with the remaining bones taken somewhere else.
Despite the strict laws it was not uncommon to see bodies floating past although thankfully we didn’t see any. The guide explained the complicated protocol involving families before and during a cremation ceremony. What surprised me was that the whole area was bustling and there was none of the somberness usually associated with funerals.
At the end of our tour we joined hundreds of other boats that had gathered at the river’s edge in front of the impending Aarti Ceremony. All the boats were packed together so you could easily walk from boat to boat to get to land.
In front of us was a line of monks performing the ceremony, ringing a small bell with one hand and waving around some kind of smoking churn in the other while loud Indian music was playing.
It was magical and a great start to our holiday. We stayed a while at the ceremony and then walked along the small roads that ran parallel to the river where huge piles of logs piled up everywhere. 
We were reaching a crossroad in the path when there was some commotion and suddenly a crowd of men rushed past us carrying a body-shaped package wrapped in cloth. Down by the river they placed it on a pile of logs and preparations started on the cremation. It sounds pretty grim but Parsis (another religion) put their dead bodies on the top of a tower for the vultures and crows to come along and eat. The government were trying to put a stop to it because there was a shortage of vultures so when the remaining birds were full up, they tended to drop bits of their dinner around the place.
Next morning we had to get up at 4.30 a.m. for our Sunrise Boat Tour. Getting up at that time was not my idea of a holiday activity but “Watch the sunrise over the Ganges” sounded too exotic to miss. We had been instructed to get a rickshaw from our hotel to the area where the sunrise ceremony would be held. It was really cold when we left the hotel but we had prepared ourselves with warm clothing. Despite the unsociable hour, it took about five seconds to find a rickshaw and the man started pulling us along on foot. I had mixed feelings about this poor sod earning a few pence pulling us along the cold streets at five in the morning. The humanitarian half of me felt guilty but the Roman half gave me the urge to take out a whip and make him go faster. It was still very dark and quiet when we turned into an area that looked like we were entering hell. I had seen plenty of people living on the streets in different countries but nothing like that. Whole families were sitting on pavements with no shelter and children with bare feet and skimpy clothes while I was struggling to keep warm with four layers of clothing. Mothers were feeding their children and going about their everyday lives as if it were a normal way to live.
We met our guide at the arranged place and he took us to where a man welcomed us onto his boat. It was still dark and cold but mystical as we again made our way slowly up the river. We waited patiently for the magnificent sunrise, which was definitely there somewhere, behind the thick cloud and mist. I later discovered that at that time of year, the sun was always obscured by clouds so it was a bit cheeky to be selling tickets for what they knew would be a no-show. At the end of the boat ride there was another ceremony like the night before but much lower key.
We had booked four tours from the same reputable company in Varanasi and while were very pleased with the guide the day before, our guide for that morning was much better. He had his own show on the radio and during the tour he told us many entertaining stories. We sat in a courtyard having our morning coffee while he told us a wonderful story about a man giving logical reasons to his king for why his life should be spared despite him robbing someone. I would have happily paid our guide just to sit and listen to his stories for three hours. He showed us around various other buildings and in one small area wrestlers were training. They were going to do some wrestling which I would have loved to see but after watching them warm up for half an hour I gave up.
We spent the rest of the day relaxing and in the evening met our guide again for a short tour. There was another ceremony which included seven monks waving what looked like small metal Christmas trees while a woman sang.
There was a completely different atmosphere to the big sound of the main ceremony the night before but it was still very moving. At the end of the ceremony, a group of five Indian women sang acapella on a stage while a large group of people sat around a fire preying and throwing rose petals onto the fire.
Federika was always ready to join in whatever was going and as soon as she sat down with them someone offered her some petals to throw into the fire. There was such a feeling of peace and kindness and a welcome for anyone who wanted to share their ceremony with them regardless of their race or religion.
The next day we had another tour with our storytelling guide, this time to the Sarnah Buddhist Temple. It was famous for being the place where Buddha gave his first sermon after achieving enlightenment. My mind often wandered when we went on tours, particularly when the guide went into great detail but this guide turned everything into a story and I was spellbound. Standing in that sacred place he told us the life history of Buddha and whilst I loved the story it didn’t make much sense to me.
Varanasi was the craziest, noisiest and dirtiest place we had ever been to but we loved it. It was hard to believe that a few years earlier the dirt was much worse and so bad that they passed laws to clean it up. Heaven knows what it was like before.
2019 India
