Varanasi fog

Varanasi

 

We arrived in the evening on the 5^th December and drove for about an hour to our hotel. We were advised to take a boat ride along the Ganges in the morning to watch the sunrise, so we headed out for a walk and to get some food. Varanasi was a bit eerie, smoky and very muddy from what we could see in the evening. 

Setting the alarm for 5 o’clock the next morning was not something I really wanted to do and dragging ourselves out of bed after 5 hours sleep was not fun either. But how cool to see sunrise on the Ganges!? As we closed our hotel door behind us, one of the hotel staff appeared to tell us that the boat-ride was cancelled due to fog. No idea why he waited 45 minutes to tell us that – we had heard him get up at the same time as us and his room was next to ours so he must have heard us up and about. This was maybe the first hint at the seeming lack of common sense in some Indian people. 

Ghat in Varanasi

We took ourselves off for a walk along the river, and what a pea-souper it was. 

The walk was eye-opening. We saw (through the fog) people doing yoga, praying, washing themselves and their clothes in the river. Along the ‘ghats’ (a ghat is a sectioned set of steps which leads down to the river) we came across a body of a young girl being burned which was a shock to the senses.

After a 5 mile walk we headed back to the hotel for breakfast and our driver appeared to take us out to see some sights of Varanasi.

Morning fog

Several temples later, some beautiful and interesting, others less so, we were taken to the Moghul market to see silk products being made. We were then collared into looking in our guide’s shop and he became very pushy about us buying something. We ended up being quite rude to him to get out, even though I would have bought half the shop if I could carry it. 

Temple

We asked our driver to drop us off along the Ganges again so we could see the ghat (Manikarnika) where bodies were ceremoniously cremated. We got chatting to a guy that worked with local hospices who gave us lots of information about the cremations. Turned out that this is a well-known money scam and we fell straight into the trap. (Second of the day after Baby D shook a guy’s hand in the market and he ended up getting a hand and arm massage!) 

Anyway, the guy at the cremation ghat told us that they burn around 300 bodies a day and exactly where they are cremated depends on the caste of the person. There are 4 or 5 levels of the ghat and the highest level is where the most important or the richest people are burned. Men are wrapped in white and women in red. The fires never go out and people are employed to be there all the time to make sure of that. Bodies are burned within 24 hours of death and families are encouraged not to cry during the cremation because then the soul would still be attached to this world and wouldn’t reach heaven. To ensure that the families don’t cry, women are discouraged from attending and the only females there are usually tourists. 

Pregnant women, unmarried people, children and certain others were not cremated but either sent off down the river in banana leaves, or sunk with stones in the river. We could see the bodies burning; we both noticed that the leg of one of the recently deceased had fallen out of his shroud and I don’t think I will ever forget that scene. People come from hundreds of miles to be cremated here and there is a hospice for the sick and the elderly which overlooks the ghat and the cremations.

Once the bodies had been burned, the ashes are put in a sectioned off part of the Ganges where people sift the ashes through the water to recover jewellery. The family doesn’t remove the jewellery as they want their loved ones to look their best in heaven. The recovered jewellery goes to the owner of the ghat and is not returned to the family. Nice little earner for him eh? The whole experience was sad and shocking, but the people were comfortable with this practice and to them death is a normal and natural part of life, and the deceased are celebrated for having reached paradise. 

Sifting ashes for gold

The boat trip scheduled for the following morning was cancelled again due to the persistent fog so we decided to venture to the cash machine as funds were running low and nowhere accepted card payments. 

After an hour and a half queuing in the bank we were informed by the officious jobsworth cashier that our cards wouldn’t work. We traipsed the streets of Varanasi searching for an ATM that actually had cash in it, growing more and more fractious by the minute. 

After another hour we gave up and headed back to the hotel. We were just about back at the bank we’d started at when we noticed a queue to the ATM! Oh what joy to see a massive queue, how very British of us. A queue meant there was money available. No queue = no money. All that effort and we’re back at the start again. We had seriously been discussing leaving India because of the money problems as it seemed to be getting  desperate for everyone. Hopefully it will improve especially once we get to Kerala/Goa especially if we can use GB pounds or US dollars instead.

The whole money situation came about because the Indian Prime Minister, Modi, decided that he wanted to put a stop to corruption and get rid of all the ‘black’ money floating about, mainly in the larger denominations. Black money meaning counterfeit notes. Anyone that had a large amount of money or any of these notes was going to be in a bit of a pickle when changing them as they would need to justify it, or they wouldn’t be able to change it, thus losing some of their wealth. I can see why he did it, and it’s admirable, but he had no provision in place for people to withdraw money, or to pay using card or other cashless technology. We would struggle if this happened in the UK and we use card and online payments so much more because we have the education, technology and infrastructure to do it. They don’t have that here. Plus, I don’t really see what’s to stop more black money appearing when the new 2000 rs and 500 rs notes fall into more general circulation. 

This was all brought in overnight; a huge change just at the start of the tourist season. We were definitely put off from entering certain monuments, museums and sites because tourists tend to pay about 10 times the entry fee of locals, and we just didn’t have enough cash on us to do this. 

Clothes washing in the river

We headed back to the hotel to find our boatman waiting to take us on this elusive boat ride up the river. Expectations were high after 2 cancellations and off we went in our private rowing boat up the Ganges and back. It was a lovely ride and we got some fantastic photos from a different perspective, including a man cleaning his teeth with his finger in the river. I honestly don’t know how they do it without being violently sick. 

'Cleaning' his teeth

Back to the hotel and our laundry had finally appeared. Smelled a bit riverish….

We are now waiting to leave Varanasi for Kolkata on the night train. Bit apprehensive about the train, plus we’ve not heard great things about Kolkata…all part of the adventure!

#varanasi #ganges #manikarnikaghat