While California gets drenched with rainstorm after rainstorm (yay!), I have had a nearly rain-less time while traveling in Asia. Until yesterday.
It was misting a little when I left the hotel at around 11am to go silk scarf shopping (for those special someones). I flagged down a rickshaw who took me about a mile down the road to a silk shop recommended by Lonely Planet as being one of the only honest silk places in town. It was an inconspicuous place, off the main drag.
I was greeted by a young indian woman who took me into the stockroom lined with shelves filled with folded scarves in plastic wrappers. The floor of the room was covered with foam cushions. She took her shoes off and sat on the cushioned area. I sat on a bench along the edge. She took out 5 or 6 silk scarves and unfurled them in front of me. “Tell me which one is the best quality” she said to me. They were all different in texture, weight, grain and I really didn’t have much of a clue, but I took a guess. Turned out it was a trick question and all of the scarves she had shown me were fakes! Then she schooled me on the silk trade in Varanasi and how most people get ripped off— most of what is sold is not really silk but polyester which can be made to look and feel just like silk! She showed me the way to tell if its really silk or not— you have to actually burn a small piece of it and if it smells like burning hair and the ash crumbles, then its silk. She demonstrated by burning the end of one of the tassles on an actual silk scarf.
A day or two earlier, I had been walking around looking for a drug store and a guy asked me if he could help. When he said, “follow me” I knew that I was getting sucked into some kind of trap, but I was also curious to find out what would happen. He said he didn’t want money for helping me find the drug store, but instead, "I have a little shop that maybe you would want to take a look at". It was a silk shop. I said, ok sure, having never been to a silk shop before. So he walked me down the road about 10 minutes and up a flight of stairs to a small silk shop, allegedly family run— 5 generations and they allegedly make their own silk. They sat me down and started unfurling silk bedspreads on the cushioned floor in front of me. I told them I didn’t need a bedspread, so out came the table cloths, one being unfurled on top of the next. I said they were not really my taste. So out came the silk scarves. I got the feeling that they would just keep unfurling one on top of another until they’d unfurled every single scarf in the shop. Who was going to fold all of these scarves and things back up and put them in their wrappers again? I could see they were working some sort of guilt-trip angle with all the unfurling, so I said none of it appealed to me and stood up and left.
Back at the legit scarf shop— I bought a couple scarves and was back out on the street. I figured I would walk back to the hotel and ditch the scarves and go out again. As I walked, the mist in the air became droplets and then sprinkles and soon a light rain was falling.
Dont quote me on this, but I dont think it rains here that often, or at least during this time of year. The main effect that the rain had was to dissolve all the piles of shit in and around the street into puddles of diarrhea which was then splattered everywhere by the various wheeled vehicles. I was very pleased that I had brought a pair of waterproof hiking shoes with me on the trip, as I dont know I how would have survived this day without them.
As I walked, I was mostly looking at the ground and at other people’s feet. No one put on rubber boots or tried to avoid the muck in any way. They just squished right through the muck in their flip flops, cardboard-thin-soled sandals, or more often than not, bare feet. Everyone had the muck in between their toes and up their shins (I stayed to the edge of the road to avoid getting splattered).
So, let it be known to the silk scarf recipients, the story of this day, on which the pristine silk scarves were transported through a virtual shitstorm so that they could be delivered safely and spotlessly to you.
I kept thinking, am I just a prissy germophobe in my thick-soled waterproof boots? I mean, they seem perfectly ok with walking through the nastiest filth in their bare feet. Is it them who has the problem or is it me? I guess the answer depends on what country you’re from.
Next I headed down to the river to check out Manikarnika Ghat, otherwise known as “the burning ghat”, where rumor has it that up to 300 bodies per day are cremated by their families out in the open by the edge of the river. I started my walk a few ghats down the river and slowly worked my way up. The river twists and turns, so coupled with the smog, you cant really see too far ahead.
I hadn’t seen any photos of the burning ghat because taking photos there is strictly prohibited, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I had a feeling I was getting close when I started seeing ginormous stacks of firewood piled up at the top of the preceding ghats.
Then I rounded a turn and wow what a sight! It was like I was looking onto a set from the Game of Thrones. There were piles of wood stacked as big as small houses— not your usual chords of wood, but big logs and branches stacked up a storey or two. In back and above the ghat were the tops of a bunch of pointy shrines. Everything was grey/brown/black from all of the soot. There was smoke and flames billowing up from around 4 different funeral pyres. Groups of people were standing around the fires. The steps down near the river were covered with ashes, marigolds, burnt and unburnt wood.
I stayed at a pretty good distance to take in the whole scene. At one point I saw what I think was a body being carried down to the river on a handmade wooden stretcher. The body was covered/wrapped in a sheet of gold foil. Im not sure what happened to it after that. I started getting harassed by a couple touts and didn’t feel like putting up with it, so I took off, thinking I might return another time for a closer inspection of the place.
