Varanasi: An Unholy, Holy Place
Interesting Things I Did and Saw:
- The Ganges River
- Burning Ghats
- The Old City
- TWO famous Lassi Shops
- Lots of drug dealers
Story-Time and Reflection:
To start with, my 12 hour train ride to Varanasi was 8 hours delayed. Even by India standards, this was pretty bad. But if there is one thing that India has taught me, it's patience. The train will get there, when it gets there. While there are lots of trains between Delhi and Varanasi, this particular train, which I didn't learn until I reached Varanasi is notoriously extremely late.
My initial impressions of Varanasi was that it was your usual very busy/crowded small city. Traffic on many of the main roads no matter what day or time. Once I reached the river area, it was like its own little world. Not that it was less busy, but there it really has its own atmosphere.
Varanasi is certainly unique. A mix between holy and incredibly unholy. I could be sitting by the Ganges, regarded as the holiness rivers in India, watching people bath in its banks, and have someone come up to me every 5 to 10 minutes asking me to if I wanted to buy any drugs. Not just weed, which really seems to be all over India, but also opium, mushrooms, ecstasy, acid, and brown sugar (really low quality heroin). It was crazy. "Sir, I have grass. No? Hash? Shrooms? Brown sugar? Good Price, sir." You cannot say no enough times, they will continue to pester and ask. They'll ask why you don't want to buy their drugs, as if you need to explain yourself to them. Some days, I wanted to hit these peddlers in the face because they were so pushy.
No good personal stories here, as I didn't indulge, but I did meet one young man from the area who apparently loved to indulge in everything, and his teeth told that tale. They were red and rotten. And while red, rotten teeth is a symptom of too much paan (which is a legal narcotic that you chew), when he told me how much he enjoyed brown sugar with a grin that framed his stained, decaying teeth, I couldn't have looked more like a avid and excessive drug user. He invited me back for dinner, apparently his wife is a great cook.....I politely declined.
Varanasi is a huge tourist destination, and while in Goa, tourism is produces much of the demand for the drugs sold, Varanasi doesn't seem to fit the same mold. It's not at all a party place, no night life, young white suburban kids are not traveling here to rage all night and buy the drugs that are going to help them party on. I still don't have much of an explanation, but I have literally never been asked to so many times throughout a day if I wanted to buy any drugs.
Other than that, Varanasi is still a pretty unique place. The whole water front is developed with walkways and ghats, which are nothing more than stairways that reach all the way down to the water, so you can spend all day just walking up and down the river, posting up somewhere to just hang out and people watch. This is definitely a great place to people watch. Watching the tourists go by, ranging from young backpackers to the grey-haired recently retire. Watching the locals just hang out, sell random trinkets as if they are particularly unique to the area, watch them wash clothes in the ganges, watch them bath.....no, they don't get completely naked for this.
It is particularly interesting to watch them bath. There is a particular ritual to it. They all go about bathing in the same way, with certain steps performed in a certain order. I asked my rotten-toothed friend about it, but he just said that's what he was taught to do. Maybe someone explained it to him at one point or another, but he's probably missing those brain cells now.
One very interesting point about Varanasi are the burning ghats. These are ghats where they cremate people. In Hinduism, being cremated by the holy ganges increases your chances of achieving moksha, which is the release from the cycle of reincarnation, meaning you go to heaven rather becoming another life-form. For this reason, everyday, throughout the year, people are being cremated on the banks here all day long. If you hang out at one of Varanasi's famous lassi shops, Blue Lassi, which is located not so far from the most popular burning ghat, you can eat your lassi and watch swaddled dead bodies being carried off to be cremated at the same time. The Old City, which is the area that is built up along the banks, is comprised of narrow snaking paths, easy to get lost in, but also creates interesting situations in which you're preferred lassi or tea shop are on the way to a burning ghat. When you're you're not watching the dead being carried by, the old city is fun to just ramble around in.
Back to the burning ghats though, I did watch a cremation for a bit, and it was interesting. The body is wrapped in cloth and sandwiched between a bunch of wood, so it doesn't really hit you what you are watching until the cloth burns away and there happens to be a foot sticking out of the pryer. Which is precisely what happened to me. I could only watch for so long after that before it was just too real for me. Honestly, it really didn't make me think, but it made me feel very uncomfortable. Yup, that's a really body in there.....just burning. It's not like the person was alive, and this act has a lot of religious meaning, and a lot meaning for the family, but I just couldn't help but only imagine flesh burning. For me, it was just gore.
All and all, Varanasi was cool. Shop keepers and drug deals might make you want to hit someone, but it's just such a fascinating mix of everything. Rambling, narrow pathways, gore, religion, holiness, unholiness, continential food, one of the best thalis I have had, people watching, and the serenity of a river flowing by. Lover it or hate it, Varanasi is like none else.
