Varanasi:

January 7th, 2005 - January 10th, 2005

Greetings to all...

Just a short message here with a ton of photos. We have been in the holy city of Varanasi for a couple of days now. It has quite a nice feel to it. It is the holiest city for Hinduism and this is where people come to die. They want to be cremated alongside the Ganges river (which runs along town) as they deem it to be holy.

There are ghats that line the river here which literally translates to "river banks" ... it is more like areas all along the river where people come to do stuff - like swim, bathe, wash clothes (that is seen has holy and a great honour), and of course, be cremated. There are a couple of ghats where cremation takes place and you can view it. It is quite a surreal experience.

We took boat rides down the river at both dusk and dawn and it is quite an experience. At night is when most of the bodies are being cremated and you can see the whole ceremony. The body is wrapped up in a white sheet and then covered with gold silk and carried on a bamboo stretcher. The dip the body in the river and then it is taken to be burned. There is a a ton of ritualism around the ceremony which I won't go into detail about, but basically the family then buys 400 kg of wood and a pyre is built where the body is burned using fire from an eternal flame nearby (which costs money depending on your wealth and status).

The body is then placed amongst the wood and set on fire. It takes a few hours for the body to totally burn. When you sit there in the boat you can see about a dozen fires burning at once. We were told that a minimum of 500 bodies are cremated there each day.

Also, and if you are interested you should look this up, there are certain people that don't get cremated (i.e. lepers, small children, etc.). Instead, they have a rock tied to them and they are taken to the middle of the river and sunk to the bottom. Same with cows as they are holy.

Our final couple days in Varanasi were quite nice. We visited Sarnath, about 10 km out of town, which is the "Birthplace" of Buddhism. It is where Buddha gave his first sermon. It was a large area of mostly dug up ruins and one very large stupa in memorial. There was tons of modern temples that had been built in recent years by Buddhist nations - the nicest were the ones by Japan and Tibet. We visited the Tibetan one and there was a massive golden Buddha statue inside that was well worth a look.

In the afternoon we headed to Assi Ghat on the Ganges River which is the farthest ghat to the south end of the river in town and we walked our way back towards our hotel. Of course, along the way, we were approached by a man who just wanted to be our friend. "Friend" has become a code word for someone who wants to take you to a shop or store.

Anyway, he said all he wanted was to explain the process of cremation and we stood over the ghat where the bodies were cremated while he explained it to us (we had already learned about it in our previous 2 boat rides - but we played along). Of course, at the end, he wanted to take us into town and show us his silks and take us to an astrologer and all sorts of other stuff. We saw silks for a bit, but then we jetted. We have learned how to say no to the pressure sale tactics here.

Which, I should add, are quite interesting. In some places, the sales tactics are very aggressive and you get pressured into buying useless stuff. Other places start throwing scarves or bed covers or whatever all over the place until you feel so bad that they have to fold it back up that you buy something out of pity. Then, there is the Varanasi technique where they are nice to you. Compliment you. Buy you chai or flowers or whatever. They act like a friend, but once they have you in the sales room they disappear.

By now, as I said, we are used to it, and it is quite funny. The best line; however, is when they tell you that you need a dozen pashminas as an "investment" or some saffron as an "investment"! We try to explain that a lot of the stuff they make and sell here is not stuff people will use back home, but it doesn't matter - they push on anyways.

Yesterday we were supposed to leave on the train from Varanasi to Calcutta (where we currently are). We were scheduled on one train but we got switched to another by a local agent who said our original train was "lazy" and always late.

Anyway, our 4:50 pm departure became 10:20 pm before we finally left. All-in-all our train got into Calcutta this afternoon around 12:30 pm, about 7.5 hours later than scheduled. While not great, the original train we were supposed to be on was running more than 12 hours behind schedule!!!

We have finally mastered the overnight train, including where to stash the bag, how to lock it, and how to make the bed comfortable with the sheets that we get. The only thing we can't perfect is how to make the people quiet - all night long people are making noise and coming through the cars selling whatever. While it is annoying, I'm sure it will be something that I miss when we leave here!

One final story - while we were waiting for our train, we remained at the hotel instead of the station. We were sitting outside when the hotel staff came out on their afternoon break to play cricket (it is bigger here than hockey is in Canada). They invited me to play. This time it was legit, no kids saying they lost the ball and we had to pay them!!! Cricket is much harder than it looks.

I was able to hit a few balls and in fact nailed one in the air over the boundary line for six runs (equal to a home run in baseball). I made two catches in the field (no gloves, just bare hands) as well. That impressed them the most, I think, because Indians can't seem to catch. They are not athletic in that sense. They were always dropping balls. However, when it came to bowling their arms were like rubber and they could whip it. I tried to bowl once and I looked like a scene out of the Movie Major League as I threw it about 10 feet outside - I could here Bob Ucker going "Just a bit outside."

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