On the 28th I left Patna on a train bound for Varanasi that left shortly before noon. We headed west, passing through flat, agricultural land just south of the Ganges River. There was lots of rice growing and being harvested, but also other crops, under India's constantly hazy sky. I saw farmers plowing with both oxen and mechanized plows. I was in a second class compartment, as from Calcutta to Gaya, but it was comfortable enough, though dirty and dusty.
After a while, two girls, one a teenager and one a little younger, sat together in the seat in front of me. I could hear their companions encouraging them to speak to me, and eventually the older one did, and I talked off and on with both during the rest of the trip. They were on their way to Varanasi for their uncle's wedding, and he and about 20 other relatives were also traveling in the carriage. They were very nice, and spoke fairly good English. They gave me what they told me was some wedding food: some sort of dry pastry, a round sweet ball, and some nuts and other tasty goodies, all served to me in a little plate made of dry leaves. The train made good time for the first three hours, but then we stayed in and around the station in Mughalsarai, just acoss the river from Varanasi, for an hour or so. Eventually, the train got going again, crossed the Ganges just downriver from Varanasi, and arrived about a quarter to 5. I took and autorickshaw (basically a three wheeled motorcycle with a chasis built around it, in which Indians can stuff ten or more people) from the station to the old city, found a hotel on one of its narrow lanes, and had dinner. After dinner, I walked through the old city's narrow lanes to the ghats (the sets of stairs that lead to the river -- there are supposed to be more than 100 ghats lining the Ganges in Varanasi) on the river and walked about in the night.
The next morning I walked to the ghats again and spent a couple of hours or more walking up and down the riverfront. There was all sorts of activity, though not as much bathing in the river as I expected. Maybe it is because it is getting colder as winter approaches. It must be about 60 degrees in the early morning, perhaps even a little colder. Varanasi is the holiest place on the Ganges, and in fact the holiest place in India, I think. I'm not quite sure why. There was a ford here in ancient times, and fords are important in Hinduism as symbolic entries to other worlds. The principal ghat, Dashashwamedh, celebrates Brahma sacrificing (medh) ten (dash) horses (ashwa).
The river water is extremely dirty, but men strip down (women stay clothed for the most part) and bathe, brush their teeth, drink, and so on. Saddhus (holy men) bizarrely dressed, usually in yellow or orange, with ash and other markings on their skin, roam around seeking alms. Priests perform puja (religious ceremonies on the steps for shaven head celebrants. Nearby on the steps are barbers using razors to shave the heads of men. Some are also shaving faces. The pujas are quite interesting to watch. The priest will place all sorts of stuff on plates in front of the celebrants, including a mound of flour, which the celebrants knead into little balls with Ganges water and perhaps a little milk. Other stuff, like mashed bananas and little black seeds, might also be added. And there are flowers, usually orange marigolds, and other stuff on the plates. The priest leads them in chants. After finishing, I saw one group board a boat with their offering plates and go out onto the river. Lots of birds hovered around them as they headed downriver, so I supposed their were tossing food into the river. Eventually, I made my way north along the river (while the Ganges is generally flowing west to east, it makes a curve in Varanasi and flows south to north along the city) to Manikarnika Ghat, the principal burning ghat. There were three or four cremation pyres burning, and untouchables, who handle all the burning, scooping up ashes from previous cremations, for deposit in the Ganges, I imagine. There are huge piles of wood stacked all around, and boats full of wood just offshore. To die in Varanasi is a good thing: you instantly attain moksha (I think it's called), or heaven. Lots of old people come here to die.
Later in the day, after breakfast, some internet time and lunch, I walked through the narrow dirty alleys of the old city. They can be quite crowded, with cows, and cow shit, and speeding, honking motorcyclists adding to the congestion. I made my way through the narrow alleys (usually about 6 feet wide, but sometimes maybe only 3-4 feet) to the burning ghat again. There was much more activity. It is a very dirty, smoky place, and 10 to 15 pyres were burning. It takes about three hours for a corpse to burn. Bodies wrapped in white cloth and covered with bright orange or yellow cloth are brought through the old city's narrow alleys on bamboo stretchers, accompanied by male family members. The body is first brought down to the Ganges and either immersed in the river or river water is poured over it. It is then taken to a stack of wood built by the untouchables, the orange or yellow cloth removed, and the white wrapped body placed on top of the woodpile. More wood is placed on top and the family members, led by one family member with a shaved head and wearing a white dhoti and shawl (so dressed like Gandhi), parade around it. Eventually, the guy in the dhoti uses a bunch of straw to set it alight. The fire comes from a sacred flame of Shiva kept nearby. The family members all stand around and watch. Usually, there seem to be about 20 of them.
The untouchables tending the fires usually eventually need to use bamboo poles to push the charred, partially burned corpses into positions where they will burn more readily, and they do this skillfully but without much care. It is a little disconcerting to see a charred torso and head, the arms and legs already burned off, being pushed and shoved by the bamboo poles into a hotter part of the fire. One of the untouchables told me everything burns but the chest of men and the hips of women, because men's chests are so powerful from work and women's hips from childbirth. Near the end, an untouchable will pick out the unburned bone with two pieces of wood and give it to the guy in the dhoti, who will take it down to the river and toss it in. He will then fill an urn with Ganges water, take it to the smoldering remains of the fire, and toss the urn over his head, with his back to the fire, onto the ashes. Then all disperse rather rapidly. Cows and dogs and goats hover nearby. I saw one dog cautiously pawing at something in the burning embers. Perhaps searching for a bit of the person cremated? The cows eat the straw used to light the fires and seem to find something to eat on the bright orange and yellow cloth that had covered the bodies on the stretchers. One of the untouchables told me the oldest son leads the formalities for fathers and the youngest son for mothers. I was told by various of the untouchables that it takes 200 to 300 kilos of wood for the pyre, so about 440 to 660 pounds, and that the cheapest wood can cost 200 rupees (about $4) a kilo. The most precious wood, sandalwood, costs much more. I think they said 2000 rupees a kilo.
I watched until past nightfall and them made my way to the ceremony, the ganga aarti, held each night at the principal ghat. Actually, there are two different ganga aartis at adjacent ghats and they attract big crowds, about 90% or more Indian, I would say. They are quite interesting and colorful. Seven guys clad in white robes waved brass censors of incense and large candelabras of fire to music and the incessant clamor of bells. They blew conch shells before and after the ceremony. It lasts more than half an hour and I enjoyed it, as did the crowd. Afterward, I had dinner with a Canadian microbiologist in India for two weeks for the wedding of a colleague and she told me the Ganges has 1.5 million micro-organisms per 10 milliliters of water (so an ounce or so) and that you shouldn't bathe in water with more than 500 micro-organisms. I thought I had read that the Ganges is so polluted from upstream industrial chemical pollution that nothing can live in it.
I got up early again the next morning to watch all the activity on the ghats and slowly made my way south along the river over about two hours to the southernmost ghat, Assi Ghat. (Varanasi gets its name because it is located between two tributaries of the Ganges, the Varuna to the north and the Assi to the south.) On the way, I passed the ghat where washermen and women beat cloths on wooden planks at the river edge to clean them. They don't appear to use soap, just the force of whipping the clothes against the wood. One guy was using a pole to beat the dirt out of the clothes. Big white, or rather whitish, sheets, lined the nearby steps, drying in the sun. These steps are not very clean. Water buffalo were wandering on the steps nearby.
At Assi Ghat I had breakfast and then took a cycle rickshaw (basically a three wheeled bicycle with a wider seat behind the pedaler for passengers) to the red Durga Temple, with a sign requesting that "non-Hindu gentlemen" not enter, then to the museum at the almost century old Banaras Hindu University, and finally to the pontoon bridge that crosses the Ganges during the dry season to Ramnagar. I walked over the rickety bridge to the riverside fort and palace of the Maharajah of Benares (another name for Varanasi). The Ganges, at this time of year, is not that wide, maybe between a quarter and a half mile. At the center of town, there is a very wide sandbank, or more like a dirt bank, on the other side. During the monsoon the river must be miles wide. On the buildings along the ghats are markings from a particularly high flood in1978 and they must be 40 or 50 feet above the present river level. I visited the maharajah's palace and fort in Ramnagar, with a dusty museum inside with lots of weapons, old cars, palanquins and howdahs (the latter for riding elephants), before taking an autorickshaw back to Assi Ghat and having a late lunch.
On the way back to the center along the river, I stopped at another of the city's burning ghats to watch the activity. Three or four cremations were going on when I arrived about 4, but by the time I left maybe an hour and a half later, there must have been about ten going. It was fascinating to watch. Just below me, I watched an touchable build a funeral pyre, and then guide family members as they poured sandalwood powder and little blocks of sandalwood on the pyre. Ghee (clarified butter) was also squeezed out of plastic bags onto the logs and some black powder was also added. The body was placed on the wood and more sandalwood powder and ghee was spread onto it. The pyre really burned well when lit. All this was happening only maybe 20 feet below me. I walked back along the river after nightfall and watched another ganga aarti, this one with five yellow-clad celebrants, but with basically the same routine as the night before.
The next morning I got down to the river early again to watch all the activity. It is all very interesting, but you do have to put up with persistent touts who want you to take a boat ride, have a massage, or buy something else off them, and they just won't take no for an answer. I try to totally ignore them. I made my way north, upriver, past the Manikarnika burning ghat, and eventually reached as far north as somewhere beyond the Alamgir Mosque (Alamgir is another name for the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb) high above the river. River activity decreases as you head away from the center, but there are interesting things to see, including some massive, but run down, buildings along the ghats.
After lunch, I wandered through the narrow lanes of the old city. At one point, eight or ten massive water buffalo came through the narrow lane. I climbed on a step into shop to avoid them. I reached the Shiva temple known as the Golden Temple for its gold-plated spire. It is supposed to be the holiest temple in Varanasi, with darshan, or worship, here belived to remit all sins. It is only a little more than 200 years old, previous ones having been destroyed by Moslems, most recently by the intolerant 17th century Mughal Emperor Augrangzeb, who built a white, domed mosque on the site. The newer temple is right beside the mosque and there is tremendous security all around. Despite a sign requesting non-Hindu gentlemen not to enter, tourists are allowed to enter, but (as with Indians) without bags, cell phones, and cameras and only after about four or five pat downs by the police. Inside the temple the courtyard was wet, dirty and slippery. Monkeys (red-butted, red-faced macaques) scampered around. Inside the main temple in a foot-high, bulbous, black stone lingam (penis) of Shiva, which worshipers touch several times and then touch their heads. Nearby is a pool, which non-Hindus are not allowed to see, where one of my guidebooks say Shiva "cooled his lingam." I would like to have seen Shiva do that, or come to think of it, maybe not.
The big mosque nearby is off-limits to non-Moslems, though you can look at it from a narrow lane. Around it are two walls with barbed wire and a high guardtower. I talked to a shopowner who told me it has been this way since 1992, the year Hindu fanatics destroyed the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, setting off all sorts of Hindu-Moslem violence. He told me there were 1000 soldiers around the old city, and you do see lots of them, with rifles, at intersections in the lanes in the old city, occasionally frisking motorcyclists. So I guess the soldiers are there as much to prevent Hindus destroying the mosque as to prevent Islamic terrorism. There was a bomb that exploded about a year ago at Dashashwamedh Ghat, killing several people. From the temple and mosque I walked through the narrow lanes to a lassi shop with excellent lassi, a yoghurt drink. While sitting in there sipping my lassi, I saw two funeral processions come by, with chanting men accompanying a yellow or orange clad body on a stretcher. I eventually made my way again to the burning ghat, Mandikarnika, watched for a while, and then made my way back to Dashashwamedh Ghat for the evening ganga aarti.
Again I got up early the next morning to watch the activity on the ghats. I went into a massive riverside palace built by Man Singh, the Maharajah of Amber, about 1600. On top is one of the observatories built in the 1700's by Jai Singh, his descendant, who founded the city of Jaipur and built six other observatories, including ones in Delhi and Jaipur which I visited last year. The palace is much run down, but there are great views from the roof.
After a couple of hours on the ghats and then breakfast, I took an autorickshaw to Sarnath, about 6 or 7 miles away. I had planned to go the day before with the Canadian microbiologist, but she had taken ill. A little too much Indian microbiology, perhaps. I got to Sarnath about noon and was disappointed to find its museum was closed. It contains the famous four lion capital to a pillar erected by the Buddhist Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BC, which is now the national symbol of India, depicted on seals and some coins. Sarnath is where Buddha gave his first sermon, five weeks after his enlightenment at Bodhgaya. A great brick stupa about 165 feet high arises in the grassy enclosure. It apparently was much higher until destroyed by Moslems around 1200. Like Bodhgaya, Sarnath was abandoned and then rediscovered and restored by the British in the 1800's. Around the stupa are the foundations of monasteries and the broken remains of the Ashoka pillar, with a Sanskrit inscription warning Buddhist monks to avoid schisms. There weren't many pilgrims, though I did see a few Tibetans.
In Sarnath I also visited a Jain temple and a Buddhist temple built in the 1930's with interesting Japanese murals depicting Buddha inside. Outside is a Bodhi tree grown from a sapling of the Bodhi tree in Sri Lanka with statues underneath of Buddha delivering his first sermon to the five ascetics who were his audience. The story is that before his enlightenment he had been fasting in the hills around Bodhgaya with them. Nearby are plaques with the text of his first sermon. They are in the languages of all the major Buddhist languages, but the main one is in the ancient Pala language, but oddly in Roman script, with an English translation, In the sermon he advises the way to enlightenment is not through denial of sensory pleasures or self-mortification, but through "the middle way," the eight fold path, right thinking, right behavior, etc. The English version contains a lot of basic Buddhist concepts, though some of it is almost gibberish, which I hope is the fault of the translation. I took an autorickshaw back to the old city and searched for the place I had stayed in when I visited Varanasi. It was a private home in the old city of a guy we had met on the way to Varanasi and I had found the address while reading my old letters from 1979. I wandered through alleys looking for it, with lots of help from friendly people. I did find the alley, but not the house. I think I might have eventually, but it was getting towards dark.
After again getting up early to watch all the early morning activities on the ghats, I spent a relatively lazy day the next day. I have a comfortable hotel here, with a bed with a fairly good mattress for a change (though it's only a foam mattress) and hot water showers for about $9 a night. I enjoy wandering the narrow lanes of the old city (despite the annoying honking motorcycles, it is much nicer than walking the chaotic streets) and along the ghats. There is always something to see. You do have to be careful in the narrow lanes. They are filthy and you have to be careful not to step into the piles of cow and dog shit, besides avoiding all the other garbage and the cows themselves, those damn motorcycles and men carrying big loads through the narrow alleys.
I got up soon after 6 the next morning, headed to the ghats, and boarded a boat for an hour trip on the river along the ghats. It was cool and misty, or perhaps hazy is a better word. It is always hazy here. The sun arose barely visible through the haze about 6:45. Actually, it had arisen before that, but you couldn't see it through the haze until then. There were lots of boats on the river, most but not all with foreign tourists. I enjoyed being rowed along the ghats and watching the bathers and a group celebrating a puja facing the rising sun across the river. Afterwards I walked along the ghats, chatting for a while with a group of students from Banaras Hindu University on a Sunday morning stroll before, they told me, heading to the cinema on their day off. I saw a group of pilgrims, the men all in white with hats like those Nehru used to wear while the women wore colorful saris. The students said they were from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, recognizing them from their clothes and speech.
After lunch I took another walk through the old city's narrow alleys, first watching three boys playing wiffle cricket in the garbage and cow excrement filled narrow alley just outside my hotel. Actually, I guess it wasn't a real wiffle ball as it had no holes, and they were using a standard wooden cricket bat. I eventually reached Manikarnika Ghat and watched the cremations for a while. There were ten or more going on, with quite a crowd watching, mostly Indians but some westerners. One woman was brought to the ghat not on a bamboo stretcher as usual but on a sort of wicker bed. Her face was uncovered, with Hindu religious markings on the forehead. That is the only corpse I've seen here not completely wrapped in white cloth. At one point a half dozen or so water buffalo charged up the ghat steps, scattering the watching crowd. I walked through some more alleys and reached the river again and then walked along the ghats to the central Dashashwamedh Ghat, where they were preparing for the evening ganga aarti ceremony. I watched a guy laboriously putting wicks and oil in the candelabras. He dumped the wicks into a big pot of oil and placed them one by one into the seven candelabras. Each has 49 spots for wicks, so it takes a while. I gave up watching after he finished the first of the seven.
After a while, two girls, one a teenager and one a little younger, sat together in the seat in front of me. I could hear their companions encouraging them to speak to me, and eventually the older one did, and I talked off and on with both during the rest of the trip. They were on their way to Varanasi for their uncle's wedding, and he and about 20 other relatives were also traveling in the carriage. They were very nice, and spoke fairly good English. They gave me what they told me was some wedding food: some sort of dry pastry, a round sweet ball, and some nuts and other tasty goodies, all served to me in a little plate made of dry leaves. The train made good time for the first three hours, but then we stayed in and around the station in Mughalsarai, just acoss the river from Varanasi, for an hour or so. Eventually, the train got going again, crossed the Ganges just downriver from Varanasi, and arrived about a quarter to 5. I took and autorickshaw (basically a three wheeled motorcycle with a chasis built around it, in which Indians can stuff ten or more people) from the station to the old city, found a hotel on one of its narrow lanes, and had dinner. After dinner, I walked through the old city's narrow lanes to the ghats (the sets of stairs that lead to the river -- there are supposed to be more than 100 ghats lining the Ganges in Varanasi) on the river and walked about in the night.
The next morning I walked to the ghats again and spent a couple of hours or more walking up and down the riverfront. There was all sorts of activity, though not as much bathing in the river as I expected. Maybe it is because it is getting colder as winter approaches. It must be about 60 degrees in the early morning, perhaps even a little colder. Varanasi is the holiest place on the Ganges, and in fact the holiest place in India, I think. I'm not quite sure why. There was a ford here in ancient times, and fords are important in Hinduism as symbolic entries to other worlds. The principal ghat, Dashashwamedh, celebrates Brahma sacrificing (medh) ten (dash) horses (ashwa).
The river water is extremely dirty, but men strip down (women stay clothed for the most part) and bathe, brush their teeth, drink, and so on. Saddhus (holy men) bizarrely dressed, usually in yellow or orange, with ash and other markings on their skin, roam around seeking alms. Priests perform puja (religious ceremonies on the steps for shaven head celebrants. Nearby on the steps are barbers using razors to shave the heads of men. Some are also shaving faces. The pujas are quite interesting to watch. The priest will place all sorts of stuff on plates in front of the celebrants, including a mound of flour, which the celebrants knead into little balls with Ganges water and perhaps a little milk. Other stuff, like mashed bananas and little black seeds, might also be added. And there are flowers, usually orange marigolds, and other stuff on the plates. The priest leads them in chants. After finishing, I saw one group board a boat with their offering plates and go out onto the river. Lots of birds hovered around them as they headed downriver, so I supposed their were tossing food into the river. Eventually, I made my way north along the river (while the Ganges is generally flowing west to east, it makes a curve in Varanasi and flows south to north along the city) to Manikarnika Ghat, the principal burning ghat. There were three or four cremation pyres burning, and untouchables, who handle all the burning, scooping up ashes from previous cremations, for deposit in the Ganges, I imagine. There are huge piles of wood stacked all around, and boats full of wood just offshore. To die in Varanasi is a good thing: you instantly attain moksha (I think it's called), or heaven. Lots of old people come here to die.
Later in the day, after breakfast, some internet time and lunch, I walked through the narrow dirty alleys of the old city. They can be quite crowded, with cows, and cow shit, and speeding, honking motorcyclists adding to the congestion. I made my way through the narrow alleys (usually about 6 feet wide, but sometimes maybe only 3-4 feet) to the burning ghat again. There was much more activity. It is a very dirty, smoky place, and 10 to 15 pyres were burning. It takes about three hours for a corpse to burn. Bodies wrapped in white cloth and covered with bright orange or yellow cloth are brought through the old city's narrow alleys on bamboo stretchers, accompanied by male family members. The body is first brought down to the Ganges and either immersed in the river or river water is poured over it. It is then taken to a stack of wood built by the untouchables, the orange or yellow cloth removed, and the white wrapped body placed on top of the woodpile. More wood is placed on top and the family members, led by one family member with a shaved head and wearing a white dhoti and shawl (so dressed like Gandhi), parade around it. Eventually, the guy in the dhoti uses a bunch of straw to set it alight. The fire comes from a sacred flame of Shiva kept nearby. The family members all stand around and watch. Usually, there seem to be about 20 of them.
The untouchables tending the fires usually eventually need to use bamboo poles to push the charred, partially burned corpses into positions where they will burn more readily, and they do this skillfully but without much care. It is a little disconcerting to see a charred torso and head, the arms and legs already burned off, being pushed and shoved by the bamboo poles into a hotter part of the fire. One of the untouchables told me everything burns but the chest of men and the hips of women, because men's chests are so powerful from work and women's hips from childbirth. Near the end, an untouchable will pick out the unburned bone with two pieces of wood and give it to the guy in the dhoti, who will take it down to the river and toss it in. He will then fill an urn with Ganges water, take it to the smoldering remains of the fire, and toss the urn over his head, with his back to the fire, onto the ashes. Then all disperse rather rapidly. Cows and dogs and goats hover nearby. I saw one dog cautiously pawing at something in the burning embers. Perhaps searching for a bit of the person cremated? The cows eat the straw used to light the fires and seem to find something to eat on the bright orange and yellow cloth that had covered the bodies on the stretchers. One of the untouchables told me the oldest son leads the formalities for fathers and the youngest son for mothers. I was told by various of the untouchables that it takes 200 to 300 kilos of wood for the pyre, so about 440 to 660 pounds, and that the cheapest wood can cost 200 rupees (about $4) a kilo. The most precious wood, sandalwood, costs much more. I think they said 2000 rupees a kilo.
I watched until past nightfall and them made my way to the ceremony, the ganga aarti, held each night at the principal ghat. Actually, there are two different ganga aartis at adjacent ghats and they attract big crowds, about 90% or more Indian, I would say. They are quite interesting and colorful. Seven guys clad in white robes waved brass censors of incense and large candelabras of fire to music and the incessant clamor of bells. They blew conch shells before and after the ceremony. It lasts more than half an hour and I enjoyed it, as did the crowd. Afterward, I had dinner with a Canadian microbiologist in India for two weeks for the wedding of a colleague and she told me the Ganges has 1.5 million micro-organisms per 10 milliliters of water (so an ounce or so) and that you shouldn't bathe in water with more than 500 micro-organisms. I thought I had read that the Ganges is so polluted from upstream industrial chemical pollution that nothing can live in it.
I got up early again the next morning to watch all the activity on the ghats and slowly made my way south along the river over about two hours to the southernmost ghat, Assi Ghat. (Varanasi gets its name because it is located between two tributaries of the Ganges, the Varuna to the north and the Assi to the south.) On the way, I passed the ghat where washermen and women beat cloths on wooden planks at the river edge to clean them. They don't appear to use soap, just the force of whipping the clothes against the wood. One guy was using a pole to beat the dirt out of the clothes. Big white, or rather whitish, sheets, lined the nearby steps, drying in the sun. These steps are not very clean. Water buffalo were wandering on the steps nearby.
At Assi Ghat I had breakfast and then took a cycle rickshaw (basically a three wheeled bicycle with a wider seat behind the pedaler for passengers) to the red Durga Temple, with a sign requesting that "non-Hindu gentlemen" not enter, then to the museum at the almost century old Banaras Hindu University, and finally to the pontoon bridge that crosses the Ganges during the dry season to Ramnagar. I walked over the rickety bridge to the riverside fort and palace of the Maharajah of Benares (another name for Varanasi). The Ganges, at this time of year, is not that wide, maybe between a quarter and a half mile. At the center of town, there is a very wide sandbank, or more like a dirt bank, on the other side. During the monsoon the river must be miles wide. On the buildings along the ghats are markings from a particularly high flood in1978 and they must be 40 or 50 feet above the present river level. I visited the maharajah's palace and fort in Ramnagar, with a dusty museum inside with lots of weapons, old cars, palanquins and howdahs (the latter for riding elephants), before taking an autorickshaw back to Assi Ghat and having a late lunch.
On the way back to the center along the river, I stopped at another of the city's burning ghats to watch the activity. Three or four cremations were going on when I arrived about 4, but by the time I left maybe an hour and a half later, there must have been about ten going. It was fascinating to watch. Just below me, I watched an touchable build a funeral pyre, and then guide family members as they poured sandalwood powder and little blocks of sandalwood on the pyre. Ghee (clarified butter) was also squeezed out of plastic bags onto the logs and some black powder was also added. The body was placed on the wood and more sandalwood powder and ghee was spread onto it. The pyre really burned well when lit. All this was happening only maybe 20 feet below me. I walked back along the river after nightfall and watched another ganga aarti, this one with five yellow-clad celebrants, but with basically the same routine as the night before.
The next morning I got down to the river early again to watch all the activity. It is all very interesting, but you do have to put up with persistent touts who want you to take a boat ride, have a massage, or buy something else off them, and they just won't take no for an answer. I try to totally ignore them. I made my way north, upriver, past the Manikarnika burning ghat, and eventually reached as far north as somewhere beyond the Alamgir Mosque (Alamgir is another name for the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb) high above the river. River activity decreases as you head away from the center, but there are interesting things to see, including some massive, but run down, buildings along the ghats.
After lunch, I wandered through the narrow lanes of the old city. At one point, eight or ten massive water buffalo came through the narrow lane. I climbed on a step into shop to avoid them. I reached the Shiva temple known as the Golden Temple for its gold-plated spire. It is supposed to be the holiest temple in Varanasi, with darshan, or worship, here belived to remit all sins. It is only a little more than 200 years old, previous ones having been destroyed by Moslems, most recently by the intolerant 17th century Mughal Emperor Augrangzeb, who built a white, domed mosque on the site. The newer temple is right beside the mosque and there is tremendous security all around. Despite a sign requesting non-Hindu gentlemen not to enter, tourists are allowed to enter, but (as with Indians) without bags, cell phones, and cameras and only after about four or five pat downs by the police. Inside the temple the courtyard was wet, dirty and slippery. Monkeys (red-butted, red-faced macaques) scampered around. Inside the main temple in a foot-high, bulbous, black stone lingam (penis) of Shiva, which worshipers touch several times and then touch their heads. Nearby is a pool, which non-Hindus are not allowed to see, where one of my guidebooks say Shiva "cooled his lingam." I would like to have seen Shiva do that, or come to think of it, maybe not.
The big mosque nearby is off-limits to non-Moslems, though you can look at it from a narrow lane. Around it are two walls with barbed wire and a high guardtower. I talked to a shopowner who told me it has been this way since 1992, the year Hindu fanatics destroyed the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, setting off all sorts of Hindu-Moslem violence. He told me there were 1000 soldiers around the old city, and you do see lots of them, with rifles, at intersections in the lanes in the old city, occasionally frisking motorcyclists. So I guess the soldiers are there as much to prevent Hindus destroying the mosque as to prevent Islamic terrorism. There was a bomb that exploded about a year ago at Dashashwamedh Ghat, killing several people. From the temple and mosque I walked through the narrow lanes to a lassi shop with excellent lassi, a yoghurt drink. While sitting in there sipping my lassi, I saw two funeral processions come by, with chanting men accompanying a yellow or orange clad body on a stretcher. I eventually made my way again to the burning ghat, Mandikarnika, watched for a while, and then made my way back to Dashashwamedh Ghat for the evening ganga aarti.
Again I got up early the next morning to watch the activity on the ghats. I went into a massive riverside palace built by Man Singh, the Maharajah of Amber, about 1600. On top is one of the observatories built in the 1700's by Jai Singh, his descendant, who founded the city of Jaipur and built six other observatories, including ones in Delhi and Jaipur which I visited last year. The palace is much run down, but there are great views from the roof.
After a couple of hours on the ghats and then breakfast, I took an autorickshaw to Sarnath, about 6 or 7 miles away. I had planned to go the day before with the Canadian microbiologist, but she had taken ill. A little too much Indian microbiology, perhaps. I got to Sarnath about noon and was disappointed to find its museum was closed. It contains the famous four lion capital to a pillar erected by the Buddhist Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BC, which is now the national symbol of India, depicted on seals and some coins. Sarnath is where Buddha gave his first sermon, five weeks after his enlightenment at Bodhgaya. A great brick stupa about 165 feet high arises in the grassy enclosure. It apparently was much higher until destroyed by Moslems around 1200. Like Bodhgaya, Sarnath was abandoned and then rediscovered and restored by the British in the 1800's. Around the stupa are the foundations of monasteries and the broken remains of the Ashoka pillar, with a Sanskrit inscription warning Buddhist monks to avoid schisms. There weren't many pilgrims, though I did see a few Tibetans.
In Sarnath I also visited a Jain temple and a Buddhist temple built in the 1930's with interesting Japanese murals depicting Buddha inside. Outside is a Bodhi tree grown from a sapling of the Bodhi tree in Sri Lanka with statues underneath of Buddha delivering his first sermon to the five ascetics who were his audience. The story is that before his enlightenment he had been fasting in the hills around Bodhgaya with them. Nearby are plaques with the text of his first sermon. They are in the languages of all the major Buddhist languages, but the main one is in the ancient Pala language, but oddly in Roman script, with an English translation, In the sermon he advises the way to enlightenment is not through denial of sensory pleasures or self-mortification, but through "the middle way," the eight fold path, right thinking, right behavior, etc. The English version contains a lot of basic Buddhist concepts, though some of it is almost gibberish, which I hope is the fault of the translation. I took an autorickshaw back to the old city and searched for the place I had stayed in when I visited Varanasi. It was a private home in the old city of a guy we had met on the way to Varanasi and I had found the address while reading my old letters from 1979. I wandered through alleys looking for it, with lots of help from friendly people. I did find the alley, but not the house. I think I might have eventually, but it was getting towards dark.
After again getting up early to watch all the early morning activities on the ghats, I spent a relatively lazy day the next day. I have a comfortable hotel here, with a bed with a fairly good mattress for a change (though it's only a foam mattress) and hot water showers for about $9 a night. I enjoy wandering the narrow lanes of the old city (despite the annoying honking motorcycles, it is much nicer than walking the chaotic streets) and along the ghats. There is always something to see. You do have to be careful in the narrow lanes. They are filthy and you have to be careful not to step into the piles of cow and dog shit, besides avoiding all the other garbage and the cows themselves, those damn motorcycles and men carrying big loads through the narrow alleys.
I got up soon after 6 the next morning, headed to the ghats, and boarded a boat for an hour trip on the river along the ghats. It was cool and misty, or perhaps hazy is a better word. It is always hazy here. The sun arose barely visible through the haze about 6:45. Actually, it had arisen before that, but you couldn't see it through the haze until then. There were lots of boats on the river, most but not all with foreign tourists. I enjoyed being rowed along the ghats and watching the bathers and a group celebrating a puja facing the rising sun across the river. Afterwards I walked along the ghats, chatting for a while with a group of students from Banaras Hindu University on a Sunday morning stroll before, they told me, heading to the cinema on their day off. I saw a group of pilgrims, the men all in white with hats like those Nehru used to wear while the women wore colorful saris. The students said they were from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, recognizing them from their clothes and speech.
After lunch I took another walk through the old city's narrow alleys, first watching three boys playing wiffle cricket in the garbage and cow excrement filled narrow alley just outside my hotel. Actually, I guess it wasn't a real wiffle ball as it had no holes, and they were using a standard wooden cricket bat. I eventually reached Manikarnika Ghat and watched the cremations for a while. There were ten or more going on, with quite a crowd watching, mostly Indians but some westerners. One woman was brought to the ghat not on a bamboo stretcher as usual but on a sort of wicker bed. Her face was uncovered, with Hindu religious markings on the forehead. That is the only corpse I've seen here not completely wrapped in white cloth. At one point a half dozen or so water buffalo charged up the ghat steps, scattering the watching crowd. I walked through some more alleys and reached the river again and then walked along the ghats to the central Dashashwamedh Ghat, where they were preparing for the evening ganga aarti ceremony. I watched a guy laboriously putting wicks and oil in the candelabras. He dumped the wicks into a big pot of oil and placed them one by one into the seven candelabras. Each has 49 spots for wicks, so it takes a while. I gave up watching after he finished the first of the seven.
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