After 2 days in Agra
and 5 in Delhi we went to Varanasi,
the religious capital of India
(more than a million pilgrims come there each year.) This time the trip was a
lot more comfortable as we decided to pay more so as to sleep in a more
comfortable part of the train.
The culture of
Varanasi is closely associated with the river Ganges and the river's religious
importance. The city has been a cultural and religious centre in northern India
for several thousand years. Along the river there are ‘ghats’: a series of
steps leading down to a body of water. Most of the ghats are bathing ghats,
while others are used as cremation sites. Many ghats are associated with
legends or mythologies. We took a boat ride along these ghats and saw several cremation
sites, though we didn’t get close enough to see the bodies burning. What a
shame!!! ;-))
Hindus believe that bathing in Ganges
remits sins and that dying in Varanasi
ensures the release of a person's soul from the cycle of reincarnation. The
guide book said that a lot of people who are seriously ill come to Varanasi
for this reason. However, we didn’t see any starving people in the streets nor
did we see any stiffs drowning in the river, again a disappointment, hahaha.
What I found most surprising and disgusting was seeing people bathing in the
river and even drinking from it! For your information, the Ganges
is one of the worlds’ most polluted rivers as it flows through highly populous
areas it collects large amounts of human pollutants but for some unknown mysterious
reason no large-scale epidemics happen. We even saw people washing their
clothes next to a sever tube coming out in the Ganges, I
couldn’t help wondering if the clothes smell like spring flowers afterwards …
As other big Indian cities, Varanasi
is chaotic and after four days of hanging around we had seen enough and decided
to head for Nepal
to remember what the smell of nature and the sound of silence are again.
