Venice Beach + India = Varanasi

Ok, the "Goodbye to India" blog posting was a bit premature. I decided to break up the 28 hour train journey from Calcutta to Delhi with a short stop in Varanasi, the holiest city in India. Varanasi is the center of the Hindu universe. It's been called the City of Life, and Hindu pilgrims come here to bathe in the waters of the Ganges River (also known as the Great Mother) to wash away their sins. As a tourist, you can't help but be captivated by everything as Hindu rituals and everyday Indian life unfold in front of you.

There's been only a few special places in the world (Yosemite comes to mind) where I just felt like everywhere I looked, there just seems to be a photograph wanting to be taken. Varanasi is definitely one of those special places. In some ways, it reminds me of Venice Beach with an Indian twist. Plenty of "performers" and everything is on full public display- grandmas bathing, kids playing cricket, oxen cooling off in the water, monkeys stealing food, goats eating garbage, babas (holy men) blessing everyone, bodies being cremated, dirty Indian men wanting to give you a massage (I stopped shaking hands with people, they kept on massaging it trying to get me to pay for a backrub, ugh)... definitely India's Venice Beach with a spiritual tinge.

There were about a dozen of ghats (baths) along the Ganges river, and there were plenty of boatmen willing to take you along the river. Like other water in India, it was used by both livestock and humans.




There were plenty of floating candle sellers for puja sacrifices during the nighttime.



My offerings...


Scenes from the waterfront at nighttime




Every night at the central Dasaswamedh Ghat, they have Hindu rituals being performed with music.



A special place indeed...