Varanasi is notorious for rip off merchants and liars who will mislead you and do anything to extract your apparently boundless wealth. If you get a taxi or auto-rickshaw you will probably not get taken to your hotel because it will have burned down or been flooded, instead you'll be taken to their 'other hotel' and charged way over the odds for it too. Watching the cows in the station and considering our options while waiting for the tourist information center to open, we got chatting to an Irish couple who led us through the now familiar gauntlet for them and showed us their very nice hotel where we promptly made a booking.
It is in the old part of town. A labyrinth of tiny alleyways and footpaths, crammed with people, cows and motorbikes. Traffic frequently backs up if two cows meet in an alley (the alleys are only about as wide as a pregnant cow) and some gentle persuasion is applied to the holy animals to find a solution to the situation. Cows are everywhere in India. Because they are considered holy animals, no-one interferes with them. The result is thousands of cows that idly wander the streets and back lanes, regarding the traffic with indifference (often acting as roundabouts), and sadly, consuming no end of the bountiful rubbish that is strewn everywhere you look. The subsequent result of this is the vast spread of dung that is absolutely everywhere. Walking through the lanes can be a bit of a dance as you have to avoid the mines, and the traffic and while passing the cows themselves, their swinging poo'y tails.
Varanasi is famous for its Ghats, stone stairs leading down to the shore of the Ganges. The length of the town lies along the water course and there are dozens of these ghats, harbouring dozens of little boats each, and food sellers and silk merchants trying to tempt you into their shops. We had arrived in Varanasi during the festival of Diwali, the festival of light and for the first couple of days the town was a little bit quieter as some people had closed their businesses and headed to their home towns to celebrate with the family. We weren't actually aware of this until a couple of days later when the town exploded back to full life.
What we were aware of though was the explosions in the sky and on the pavements. The festival of light is celebrated with fireworks and we spent a couple of evenings up on the roof of our hotel watching the sky glowing and dancing in colours all around us. It also seemed to be the festival of big bangs as plenty of kids were throwing bangers all over the streets, lots of them big enough to probably be classed as a bomb back home. The biggest fireworks of all though belonged to our hotel owner who put on a show on his roof with quite the arsenal of explosives. He was setting off mortars that exploded into star bursts that wouldn't look out of place in a big organised firework display and he had plenty of them. Excitement gave way to terror when one of the rapid-fire fireworks fell over and started launching rounds into the crowd but we were soon all enjoying ourselves again, especially when he brought out his piece-de-resistance, a massive box that once lit took about five minutes to launch about 240 fireworks into the sky.
The fireworks and explosions lasted for about a week after the actual festival, though it didn't seem to bother the cows who didn't even batter an ear at the biggest booms that had us cowering. In the pursuit of some calm we headed out of town to Sarnath, another Pilgrim stop often visited in conjunction with Lumbini in Nepal. This is the park where the Buddha is said to have delivered his first sermon, sitting in a deer park under a bodhi tree. Today the place remains a serene park with several ancient monastic remains, another Ashokan Pillar and a Bodhi tree said to be a direct cutting of a direct cutting, and a couple of times more of the original tree he sat under. There's also a deer park here though no claims are made about the ancestry of those.
We spent a week in Varanasi, acclimatising to the Indian way of things, the noise, the cows and the bustle and also, the very very slow service in restaurants, the like not seen since Cambodia. The record was waiting over an hour for a cup of tea and a piece of toast. By the end of the week all that was left was to go out on the Ganges in a boat.
We had almost been putting this off because, despite being such a holy, and cleansing river, the water is really dangerous. It is full of heavy metals and toxins, dumped by industries up stream and it is full of rubbish floating along and nourishing the odd bathing cow. People come down to bathe and purify themselves in the water, seemingly blind to the true state of the water. Our Irish friends had witnessed floating animal carcases when they took a boat out into it.
The Ganges is a very holy river though and Varanasi is a very holy town. Apparently, if you die here you automatically gain immediate enlightenment and thus escape the cycle of reincarnation. As such, lots of old people see out the last of their days here, and once the last day has come and gone, they get cremated in open pyres at the shore of the Ganges, just to make doubly sure. There are two 'burning ghats' in Varanasi, one at either end of the town, where day and night the orange glow of the flames illuminates the ancient and majestic buildings behind.
We had pretty much seen everything Varanasi had to offer, and we had pretty much acclimatised to India's ways now as well. It was time to head out of town and toward the one place with an even harder reputation for scams - Delhi.
It is in the old part of town. A labyrinth of tiny alleyways and footpaths, crammed with people, cows and motorbikes. Traffic frequently backs up if two cows meet in an alley (the alleys are only about as wide as a pregnant cow) and some gentle persuasion is applied to the holy animals to find a solution to the situation. Cows are everywhere in India. Because they are considered holy animals, no-one interferes with them. The result is thousands of cows that idly wander the streets and back lanes, regarding the traffic with indifference (often acting as roundabouts), and sadly, consuming no end of the bountiful rubbish that is strewn everywhere you look. The subsequent result of this is the vast spread of dung that is absolutely everywhere. Walking through the lanes can be a bit of a dance as you have to avoid the mines, and the traffic and while passing the cows themselves, their swinging poo'y tails.
Varanasi is famous for its Ghats, stone stairs leading down to the shore of the Ganges. The length of the town lies along the water course and there are dozens of these ghats, harbouring dozens of little boats each, and food sellers and silk merchants trying to tempt you into their shops. We had arrived in Varanasi during the festival of Diwali, the festival of light and for the first couple of days the town was a little bit quieter as some people had closed their businesses and headed to their home towns to celebrate with the family. We weren't actually aware of this until a couple of days later when the town exploded back to full life.
What we were aware of though was the explosions in the sky and on the pavements. The festival of light is celebrated with fireworks and we spent a couple of evenings up on the roof of our hotel watching the sky glowing and dancing in colours all around us. It also seemed to be the festival of big bangs as plenty of kids were throwing bangers all over the streets, lots of them big enough to probably be classed as a bomb back home. The biggest fireworks of all though belonged to our hotel owner who put on a show on his roof with quite the arsenal of explosives. He was setting off mortars that exploded into star bursts that wouldn't look out of place in a big organised firework display and he had plenty of them. Excitement gave way to terror when one of the rapid-fire fireworks fell over and started launching rounds into the crowd but we were soon all enjoying ourselves again, especially when he brought out his piece-de-resistance, a massive box that once lit took about five minutes to launch about 240 fireworks into the sky.
The fireworks and explosions lasted for about a week after the actual festival, though it didn't seem to bother the cows who didn't even batter an ear at the biggest booms that had us cowering. In the pursuit of some calm we headed out of town to Sarnath, another Pilgrim stop often visited in conjunction with Lumbini in Nepal. This is the park where the Buddha is said to have delivered his first sermon, sitting in a deer park under a bodhi tree. Today the place remains a serene park with several ancient monastic remains, another Ashokan Pillar and a Bodhi tree said to be a direct cutting of a direct cutting, and a couple of times more of the original tree he sat under. There's also a deer park here though no claims are made about the ancestry of those.
We spent a week in Varanasi, acclimatising to the Indian way of things, the noise, the cows and the bustle and also, the very very slow service in restaurants, the like not seen since Cambodia. The record was waiting over an hour for a cup of tea and a piece of toast. By the end of the week all that was left was to go out on the Ganges in a boat.
We had almost been putting this off because, despite being such a holy, and cleansing river, the water is really dangerous. It is full of heavy metals and toxins, dumped by industries up stream and it is full of rubbish floating along and nourishing the odd bathing cow. People come down to bathe and purify themselves in the water, seemingly blind to the true state of the water. Our Irish friends had witnessed floating animal carcases when they took a boat out into it.
The Ganges is a very holy river though and Varanasi is a very holy town. Apparently, if you die here you automatically gain immediate enlightenment and thus escape the cycle of reincarnation. As such, lots of old people see out the last of their days here, and once the last day has come and gone, they get cremated in open pyres at the shore of the Ganges, just to make doubly sure. There are two 'burning ghats' in Varanasi, one at either end of the town, where day and night the orange glow of the flames illuminates the ancient and majestic buildings behind.
We had pretty much seen everything Varanasi had to offer, and we had pretty much acclimatised to India's ways now as well. It was time to head out of town and toward the one place with an even harder reputation for scams - Delhi.
3 comments:
You don't need to go all the way out there to see a cow on the street, just come shopping with me! lol!
hiya guys! love the blog! We are making it Matthews next reading homework which i think is sooooo coool. You guys look so great in your picture! Really looking forwards to seeing you both, we've missed you both mightly! Take care x x x Frances
Ohhh, err!
Didn't know this:
"Varanasi is a very holy town. Apparently, if you die here you automatically gain immediate enlightenment and thus escape the cycle of reincarnation. As such, lots of old people see out the last of their days here, and once the last day has come and gone, they get cremated in open pyres at the shore of the Ganges, just to make doubly sure."
Awesome!
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