Varanasi: The Ultimate Tourist Test
"Driving is much like a video game," my driver told me me as he careened around craters, bounced over ruts, dodging dogs, cows, bicycles, tuktuks and pedicabs on the dusty road from the airport to the hotel. Everyone in charge of a conveyance wants to get there first. The guy with the loudest horn and the most chutzpah wins.Welcome to Varanasi - people are literally dying to come here. Actually, they come here to die. Their bodies, wrapped in red and gold funeral cloth, accompanied by the sound of chimes and drums, are carried by litter through the narrow cobbled alleys down to the ghats (the broad steps leading down to the Ganges River) where they are set upon funeral pyres and burned. Their ashes are swept into the river. This is how one achieves Nirvana and escapes the cycle of rebirth.You're either going to love this city or you'll want to get out of town the moment after you arrive. Varanasi is where the pedal meets the metal, where (as our son Jonathan said), "The shit gets real." It's the supreme test of a first world tourist's ability to go with the flow in a people and bovine-packed third world city. Cows, goats, dogs wander freely, grazing on the piles of garbage that cover the streets. As Monday follows Sunday, it's garbage in and, after a trip through some wandering animal's digestive system, garbage out, whereever the animal wishes.
We planned our trip for the dry season and, almost as soon as we arrived, the rains began. "Most unusual weather," our pedicab driver responded as we nervously listened to the full throated thunder followed immediately by bolts of lightening that lit up the foggy sky. Rain that started as fat splats became pelting sheets that turned the lanes into flowing streams of merde de vache (somehow this sounds better in French) and rendered the cobblestones as slick as stewed okra. An unending procession of humanity and livestock - merchants, locals, pilgrims, school children, beggars, tourists, men staggering under the weight of sacks of this and that on their backs, 'pallbearers' carrying bodies down to the burning ghats, cows, bulls, goats, dogs - played hopscotch across bottomless puddles of thick red mud consisting of you-don't-want-to-know, egged on by the incessant, demanding horns of men on motorbikes pushing through the throngs.The boys stayed in a guest house on one of the ghats in a quiet section of the old city. Their room afforded a stunning up close view of the Ganges.
From the adjacent balcony we could watch boys flying kites, monkeys swinging from treetops to roof tops. We watched cows lumbering up and down narrow stairs to the river. Who knew that cows could climb stairs? The more heavily touristed areas and burning ghats were up river a bit, but the smoke and fog, the crazily crowded boats full of pilgrims, the sound of bells and the cries of street side hawkers bore witness to the fact that we weren't in Kansas anymore.We spent hours walking along the ghats. Everywhere we turned there was something either astonishing, incredible, and/or unbelievable. Even the simply unusual sights took on a new dimension as we were both jet lagged and stunned by the fact that a few days ago it was bitterly cold and now it was summer. Granted, Taipei wasn't bitterly cold but Jonathan, who'd never been to India, was stultified by the scene. I could sense how hard it would be to translate this place into words. So I took lots of pictures. Here's an example of graffiti Varanasi-style, followed by sari-drying and wandering cows:
Max and Jon availed themselves of the spa services:
We walked past piles of wood stacked and ready for the funeral pyres.Peaked into doorways of homes lining the narrow alleys:
Before David and Sam headed off to Rajasthan, we treated ourselves to a farewell dinner at the Taj.
Feeling the need to take a break from the muddy streets, Max, Jon and I hired a driver to take us to Sarnath's museum and nearby temples. Ten km. from Varanasi, Sarnath is the site where Lord Buddha preached his first sermon "Maha- Dharma-Chakra Pravartan" (in Buddhist terminology, ‘turned the wheel of the law’) after his enlightenment. Sarnath is one of the richest cities in Buddhist antiquities ranging in date from the times of Ashoka down to the 12th century. Ashoka built here the Dharmarajika Stupa and near it erected a pillar surmounted by the magnificent capital of four adorned lions that today forms the national emblem of India. Among other structures at Sarnath are the ruins of the brick temple representing the Mula-Gandha Kuti, ruins of stupas and monasteries. Among the more imposing ones is the Dhamekh Stupa, adorned with delicate floral carvings in the lower part, the Chaukhandi Stupa and Mahabodhi Society’s Mulgandha Kuti Vihar Temple. Sarnath has also yielded an extremely rich collection of Buddhist sculptures comprising of numerous Buddha and Bodhisatva images which can be seen at Archaeological Museum, Sarnath.
We attained a bit of enlightenment and saw the sun for a few moments in an otherwise stormy day.Then the three of us headed back to Delhi and caught our respective planes - Max back to Western Mass. where Joanna and Eli were anxiously awaiting his arrival; Jonathan, lugging a huge parcel of gifts, back to Taipei; and me, bound for Ahmedabad to start my adventures in Gujarat. It was, as always, hard to say goodbye to the boys and see this phase of the trip end. Knowing that we would all be together soon at Sam's wedding (!!) made for a slightly easier farewell.