Varanasi is an absolutely fascinating town. Situated next to India's most sacred river, The Ganges or The Ganga, it is a place where Hindus come to die and families bring their deceased loved-ones to be cremated. The banks of the river are lined with rows and rows of ghats, which are big steps leading down to holy rivers. From the ghats, people wash, drink, swim and do their laundry in the water, despite the fact that it is a murky-brown colour with floating rubbish and is where dung-covered water buffalo take their baths. It is also apparently not uncommon for the odd dead body to pop up and float on the surface.
The 'burning ghats' are where queues of relatives wait to put bodies on giant bonfires, granting the deceased a ticket straight to paradise. It is a strange experience strolling past such open cremations, viewing grief as a tourist in sunglasses and flip-flops. It was a little unsettling to walk next to a body laid out, covered in gold cloth, waiting its turn on the fire.
If you wander along the ghats early enough in the morning, you are granted with a serene and picturesque walk. As the day progresses, however, you start to be joined by a large number of touts, hoping to get you into their boat or sell you some postcards.
On our first day in Varanasi we took a sunset boat trip a little way along The Ganges. A sitar and tabla player sat at the bow and we released little pots of candles and flowers into the water to float off into the night. I managed to knock a candle out of its holder and it fell under the floorboards of the boat. There was a moment of horror as I glanced down to see the area under my feet all aglow. I hurriedly began pulling up floorboards and one of the boatmen rushed over and extinguished the candle. The boat was made of quite old, dry wood so probably wouldn't have taken too long to go up in flames...
The next morning we got up at 5am for a sunrise boat ride, watching the town come alive from the water. Later in the day we took an autorickshaw out to Sarnath, an archeological site which is apparently where Buddha made his first speech, marking the beginning of Buddhism as a religion. After all the Hindu temples, it was quite a nice change to see a few Buddhas.
On day three, after taking a cycle rickshaw to visit a temple overrun with monkeys, we picked up a packed lunch from favourite cafe, Bread of Life, and headed for the overnight train to Kolkata, the last destination on the tour.
