After a not particularly enjoyable day or so in Lucknow we needed to get back to some fun otherwise I was worried that the novelty of travelling may start to wane alittle thin on our group; myself included.
The taxi across to Varanasi didn’t help the situation with the supposed 6 hour journey turning into close to 9 hours due to the taxi driver being useless again and some crazy traffic. In the end we had to be rescued by a guy from the hostel.
Sue and Zoe disappeared on his scooter with him which was a strangely proud moment and left me in a random street with some of the bags amongst the craziness of the evening.
It did dawn on me as he drove off with them that we didn’t actually know he worked in the hostel and it could have been a crafty plan by the grumpy taxi driver to kidnap them. Alas it wasn’t.
The hostel is situated right on the Ganges, I could literally throw a stone into it from the roof and our first glimpse of it was a murky vision through the night haze. It was immediately disappointing to find that no official river cruises are taking place due to the river being in flood at the moment.
We found a local place to shovel down some curry before a surprisingly good nights sleep in the hostel bunks; despite the dogs which live outside it occasionally going mental.
The morning brought a cloudy sky over the merky river and we ventured out it instantly became sweat inducing hot as we navigated narrow smelly streets.
It appears to be similar to jodhpur’s old town where you are never hundred percent sure where you are going at any stage, that and the need to constantly step over rubbish and the random feaces whilst avoiding being hit by a scooter.
I wanted to give Zoe a gentle introduced to the river so we went to one of the ghats for bathing and had a brief bit of people watching.
It’s amazing to watch hundreds of people go down to the river, often with newly shaved heads, to undress down to underwear and walk straight in to the filthy water. I don’t think I have encountered water before which looked like gravy with a rubbish scum of the top.
People seemed to have similar routines where they would crouch to start with and seemingly offer up to the heavens handfuls of water, before submerging themselves fully underneath numerous times.
Young lads were attempting to cut up the muddy slit from the sides and frequently jumped off nearby boats to get clean again.
We had plenty of offers for ‘free’ advice and the local custom seems to be hand massages as old men kept grabbing me and started to manipulate my fingers despite my protests.
One such offer of advice was very persistent and as a result he led us to the main burning ghat of the river; the Manikarnika despite me repeatedly telling him I wasn’t paying him.
Manikarnika is the main burning ghat of the river and the place which is one of the holiest cremation grounds in the country. In Hinduism death is considered as a gateway to another life marked by the results of one’s karma and cremation is the last chapter of such. To be cremated and have your ashes swept into the sacred river is seen as a divine privilege. 
We were greeted by huge stacks of tree trunks waiting to be broken up to fuel the fires and ignored the men trying to act as guides and walked around the preparation area of the wood, down towards the rivers edge.
We were told that the burning of the bodies was in a higher building due to the floods as the usual places were still underwater at the moment and as we continued to walk we saw where they meant.
It was a large, open sided building with a low wall around the edge of it, all well above our head height. Filthy muddy steps led up to an area where we could see the smoke billowing out from the individual fires. I started to walk up, thinking I would go and see just how graphic it was before telling the others if it was suitable or not.
A man started to talk to me and beckoned me to follow him past the first row of burning fire pits, which were laid out two by two and about ten deep towards the river.
The ash, dust and heat was immediately overwhelming and I could hardly see around me but it was pretty evident that you could make out the embalmed bodies within the alight pits and then those waiting their turn beside them.
At that point (after only about 30 seconds) I had had enough and my clothes were covered in the fine ash which was choking me at the same time. I turned around to head out again and to my horror I saw Sue and Zoe stood not that far away and already past the first set of pits. Both looked how I felt and so we hurried down the steps to find slightly cleaner air.
Zoe immediately was overcome with the emotion of the situation and related it to the fairly recent cremation services she has attended back home for loved ones she frequently talks about.
If she hadn’t had followed me up I wouldn’t have let her go to witness what she did, however when she calmed down it did prompt an incredibly grown up conversation between us all about life and death.
One of the reasons for coming to Varanasi was to witness and attempt to learn about the culture and cremations as it’s so starkly different to the clinical process we have back home. Here it is so in your face and really just seen as another part or stage of the individuals journey.
Zoe asked us many questions which we simply couldn’t answer in relation to what we wanted when we died, I haven’t thought about it because the whole thing terrifies me but it’s something which I should be clear about in case I get hit by a bus (or scooter / cow / rickshaw) tomorrow.
It’s a burden that I would hate for Sue and Zoe to have to go through.
So we didn’t really get back to ‘fun’ but the 24 hours were certainly different and adduced thought provoking. Judging by the looks of things to do in Singapore compared to here the fun will have to start properly on Sunday instead.
The Jude's Wanderlust 