Varanasi is three cities.
#1: The high holy Hindu city of myriad temples, ghats and the Ganga, with its boat men, water buffalo, hash dealers, river laundry and holy rituals in life and death.
#2: The city of tangled, narrow stone alleyways full of tiny food stalls and push-and-shove masses of people. Turn a corner and you may never find your way back to the same place again.
#3: The proper city of over one million people in its metropolitan area and traffic-choked sidewalk-less streets jarring enough to drive you back into the alleyways and onto the ghats.
Cecilia and I arrived at Varanasi Junction railway station in the late morning of April 2nd after a long overnight train ride from Agra. Bleary-eyed and disoriented, we were in no mood to bargain for onward transit but Varanasi was ready for us nevertheless. A snaggle-toothed old man with a squeaky, high-pitched voice tailed us all the way from our train platform to the exterior of the station, gabbing and pitching all the while.
As soon as we discovered the collection of rickshaws on the circle drive, he cut us a deal – 50 Rupees for transit to the ghats, where most of the desirable backpacker lodgings lay. The low price stunk of a guesthouse commission racket, but it was still a better deal than the prepaid rickshaw booth.
It’s a good idea to triple-bid your lodgings in any Indian city. Values can range wildly between 300-600 Rupees, and this held true in Varanasi. We reviewed five different guesthouses near Assi Ghat. Our ancient transpo captain, in his whistling falsetto, oscillated between his relation of longstanding knowledge of Varanasi guesthouses (“You see, I know the prices!”) and excited, hand-clapping identification of temples (“Ganesh, Ganesh!”) as they whizzed by.
After inspection of four “meh” rooms, our driver finally took us somewhere good: Singh Guest House, a gated property with a garden, a generator for when the power goes out (every day), an inhouse restaurant that stays open until around 11:00 PM and single rooms from 200 Rupees, doubles at 400/600/800.
We wanted a 400, they only had 600 and 800. We took a 600 with plans to move into a 400 (which we never did – oops!). The room was a huge, non-AC ensuite that stayed fairly cool and quiet during the day despite how hot and chaotic Varanasi became. Spending a little more than usual for a bit nicer room felt extravagant.
When I say spending 600 Rupees/roomnight is a splurge, understand that this is only a measly $12 US. But when lodgings of comparable value can often be had for half this price, why not save the money?
A difference of 300 Rupees a night could mean one night in a 600/night place or two in a 300/night place, whereas a difference of $6 to $12 US is a question of whether you’d like chips and a beer with your Chipotle burrito or not.
So – are you thinking in Rupees, or thinking in your home currency? I try to do the former as much as possible in India. Keeping value in perspective keeps you on budget without diminishing your enjoyment.
We dropped our bags, laid down for a bit (night trains don’t assure proper rest) and watched the geckos scurry about on the interior walls until sleep came.
We awoke in the afternoon and were ready to face the world again. The banks of the Ganga weren’t far – we walked about a block east and thirty or forty steps down to the pre-monsoon river. Holy as they may be, the ghats were as much a multipurpose playground/cattle bath/jetty/cricket pitch as anything. As usual in India, the divine was interlocking elbows with the secular.
One of the primary irritations on the ghats is the endless harassment of the boat-men. In a two-hour leisurely walk up the ghats, we were offered boat hire thirty-one times. Boat men will want 150 Rupees for a one-hour ride along the ghats. You should be able to get it for 80-100 if you’re in a bargaining/boating mood.
Boooooat sir, booooat?
It’s not all boat pitches, though – there’s plenty of hash for sale on the ghats too! And just because you don’t want any doesn’t mean that the sales pitch draws to a close. Oh no – it may never end! I tried just about every way of ending these agitating interactions, and nothing worked other than walking outside the jurisdiction of that particular hash dealer (and into another’s).
“I don’t want any hash / I already have some / I don’t smoke / I must be going!”
“But sir, sir, you can see my quality!” <gives chase>
[REPEAT AD NAUSEUM]
The boats, the hash, the trinkets and flowers for sale on the waterfront, the endless engagement in general made it almost impossible to have a relaxed gaze at the river and the people along it.
free range in Varanasi.
Now and again, in these hotbeds of intensity and heavy-handedness, someone or something jumps out of the poking and prodding and just wants to have fun. In this case, it was the kids on the ghats. Maybe they just hadn’t yet calculated our desperate needed of hash and boats. Maybe they were just being funny kiddos!
process
product
Just north of this explosion of carefree life was release in death. Manikarnika Ghat, the largest funerary burning ghat in Varanasi, showed itself just around the corner. You can walk right in from the adjacent ghats or alleys and watch as long as you like. Everybody’s invited.
Ten or so funeral pyres were burning – some smoldering after a long, consuming burn, others new with fabric-covered corpses marched down the stairs, dipped in the holy Ganga and placed atop piles of lit timber to end the endless cycle of reincarnation warranted by the Hindu faith. The site was busy, with more bodies arriving every few minutes after their final march through the streets of Varanasi. The dark, ashen soil of the burning ghat seemed to slide into the Ganga along with the final effects of those that had arrived to burn. Sterile, no.
There’s nothing unnatural or jarring about open-air cremation. The western tradition of burning the casketed body in an industrial oven is much stranger to me. When we saw charred human legs jutting out of one of the fires, it offered no shock.
What seemed strange was the milieu surrounding the burning ghats: unclaimed cows and stray dogs roamed freely between fires, goats munched on floral offerings and reflective fabrics from funeral rites. This animal free-for-all, viewed through a high-burning pyre, gave more of a vision of Hades than a purification of one’s soul and achievement of moksha.
The same hawkers from the rest of the city were present at the burning ghats, chatting up tourists for cash. One claimed to be from an untouchable caste, and explained, in friendly fashion, the difference in the type/cost of wood available for use in pyres. Sandalwood is the top choice, but also the most expensive option, often used for those of the Brahmin caste. Mango is the people’s choice at a lower price point. After an engaging walkthrough of funeral rites, our untouchable tried to capitalize, outstretching an open palm with a request that we help pay the cost of wood for the funeral pyres of the poor.
Oh, to pluck at my heartstrings so! If I could actually help level the playing field a bit in such a way, I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed. But to hand money off in the street to an unknown? Nonsense. I like to think that deception of the sort in holiest-of-holy places comes with karmic repercussions. The nerve!
The other scam that’s hard at work at the burning ghats is the “no photo” guys that patrol the perimeter of the site. If you have a camera around your neck, in your hand, or anywhere on your person, they’ll approach you and firmly insist that you not take photos of the cremations. Friends unaware of the rule took photos from a distance were threatened with physical violence (“I will break your arm/leg”) until they coughed up a hefty fee to these bullies.
Personally, I don’t need photos of burning bodies just like I don’t need photos of lepers and homeless children, so when I’m asked to not take photos, I’m already a step ahead. Yeah, these subjects carry emotional weight in a photograph, but to snap photos and share them with your friends is tasteless to me – especially when you’ve paid off the poor/crippled person or neighborhood strongman for access. Use discretion and don’t feed this photographic monster!
In my opinion, this scam exists because tourists are easy targets for extortion – not because photographs somehow defile the bodies/rites of the departed.
A dog had died at the base of the stairs leading into Manikarnika ghat, about two paces from where bodies are brought in. Long since passed, its corpse was covered in flies. No one noticed but us. Days later, the dog’s body still sat in the same location. Now a skeleton, there it lay, invisible to the workers on the ghats. No one did so much as to clean the dog away or throw it in the (already filthy, polluted) Ganga.
So tell me this: if a dog can rot away to nothing in one of the holiest places in India, and if cows roam unfettered amongst corpses, exactly how much damage can my camera do?
If you hire a “boooooat” and drift by the burning ghats, you’re out of reach of the scammers and can click off as many frames of the site as you like without protest if you so desire. Search “burning ghats varanasi” if you’d like to take a gander at others shots.
facing south, toward Dasaswamedh Ghat.
Not everyone is a candidate for cremation. There are six types of people that don’t qualify:
- Sadhus
- Victims of smallpox
- Victims of snakebite
- Young children
- Pregnant women
- Lepers
Their souls are considered pure already, and purification by fire is unnecessary. Their bodies are simply thrown into the Ganga. Yep.
If you look upon the river at the right (or, rather, wrong) time, you may witness a body floating slowly down the river (we did). If you look at a more unfortunate point, you might see one of these bodies dragged onto shore by a pack of stray dogs, or being pecked by hungry birds (we didn’t).
Thinking metaphysically: if the soul has already left the body by this point, then who cares what becomes of the vessel, right? Well, it’s more of a curious thing when the floating bodies of the dead occupy the same body of water as those bathing their water buffaloes, piloting their diesel-belching dunghis, washing their laundry upon the rocks, performing puja (prayers) in the shallows or fetching a mis-hit cricket ball out of the river. Anything goes.
burning the laundry would probably get it cleaner.
Some travelers are brave enough to wade into the Ganga. I had no interest. The one time the water hit my hands, it felt both slimy, sticky and all wrong. More importantly, I don’t adhere to the Hindu faith and have doubts that my sins could be absolved as such. That might require two dips in the river. And/or a baby pool full of bleach.
An ignored sign in Varanasi. The Ganga is so holy that it’s still defensibly clean to many Indians regardless of the trash, detergent, human remains and animal waste that goes into it.
When the ghats have pushed your buttons enough, you can always head back into the alleys.
The alleys of the old city are a twisting mess of lassi wallahs, textile vendors, tea men, sweet shops and wholesalers. Everybody seems to specialize in just one thing. Each vendor is crammed into a space smaller than the next. I don’t speak Hindi, but nobody seemed to be complaining about ergonomics.
treehouse.
Motorbikes still maintain the same right-of-way they exercise in the street, and their horns seem even louder than usual in the tight spaces. After it rains, the dirt, cow dung and trash of the less-traveled alleys becomes democratically spread across the stones and bricks – a slippery patina.
As the light shifts throughout the day, everything in the alleys begins to look different – or is it the same? It’s easy to get lost, so bring your compass. That said, it can be nice to get lost in the alleys. There’s always something new to see, and you can lose yourself in time and space even though you’re never far from the Ganga or the main road to the west. Need a break? Stop for a 5 Rupee chai, of course!
Below are a collection of shots from an evening’s meander through some less-touristed alleys, north of the burning ghats.
Shopping anywhere in India can be an exercise in exhaustion and frustration. Even if you set out with a mind to purchase something – say, spices or a certain cut of textile – the salesmen come at you with such intensity that you may change your mind and buy nothing. It can be hard to find a shop that simply lets you review their products without a hands-on walk-through of each one. Varanasi shopkeepers were certainly guilty of this.
Cecilia had a mind to buy a saree while we were in Varanasi. But how to find the right shop in which to buy? The main road and alleys are dotted with countless saree shops, and to try to figure the value and service of one saree shop over another could be a week-long project.
We finally chose a shop based solely on how many Indian women were shopping within. It didn’t seem like a tourist spot.
Cecilia arrives at Swastik Sarees, near Vishwanath Temple. A dizzying array of textiles.
Neither of us had ever attempted to buy a saree before, so the process was a bit unfamiliar. Here’s what we learned!
- First: ask the salesman to show you as many sarees as you like. Don’t pity them for having to refold them later – they work in retail and they’re used to it. Keep looking until you find something you like. If you don’t like the sarees they have, don’t feel pressured to buy – there’re a million sarees around the corner that you might prefer.
- Second: Bargain and buy a saree, of course! In Varanasi, we looked at two types of sarees: “Banarasi Sarees“, a traditional high-end saree made only in Varanasi, and “Designer Sarees”, which span a wider category and price range (high and low) even if they may not be conceived of by a designer of note. Some sarees are unfinished works and will need a day or two of work before you can pick them up.
- Third: After you receive the finished saree, visit a tailor and have petticoat and blouse made for your saree (many are too transparent to wear without a petticoat, even if you are a flamboyant, heathen westerner!). Tailoring will add a small amount of cost to the price you pay for the saree itself and will likely take another day or two to finish. Should you run out of time in the city in which you purchased the saree, tailoring be done in a subsequent city on your itinerary – inexpensive, high quality tailor shops are easy to find throughout India.
I would recommend budgeting 2-4 days total for purchasing and finishing a saree. It’s not automatic, and if it is you’re probably getting something pre-fabricated with tourists in mind. Go with the real deal – it’s not more expensive, and it’ll fit the way it was intended.
Our shy store clerk finally agrees to teach Cecilia how to tie a saree. This isn’t the one she ended up with – it gets finished/displayed in the next city we visit!
Accessorizing and completing Cecilia’s saree done took a little longer than expected for reasons outside of any textile salesman or tailor’s control.
We unexpectedly ran into Lior, a friend from the Andaman Islands, on our first night in Varanasi and shared dinner at a popular dining spot in the old city. With his usual optimistic smile, he complained of two full weeks of bedridden illness in Varanasi. He had just gotten back on his feet that day and was leaving Varanasi for Rishikesh.
Lior at Holi Festival on Havelock Island.
With that (and unbeknownst to him or us), Lior transferred his CURSE! Two days later, Cecilia was so sick that she was unable to leave the room for more than 15 minutes at a go.
We visited the pharmacist and received a handful of pills. The condition persisted. We sat through a two hour hospital visit and got another unrelated regimen. Nothing much changed. It was worrisome! Every time I had been sick in my three months in India (plenty of times), the symptoms weren’t serious and faded after a few days’ time.
We canceled our train tickets and pushed our visits to Bodhgaya and/or Kolkata back by several days. We even considered leaving the saree behind – it was going to take too much effort to fight through the alleys to pick it up at the shop.
Cecilia slept and rested during the days while I roamed the ghats and alleys for photos or fetched takeout meals. Finally, her strength returned (at least enough so to climb atop a train platform while wearing a heavy backpack) and we started making plans again. The shop clerks at Swastik were surprised to see us when we returned to claim the violet designer saree.
Since the hospital offered no real diagnosis for the condition, I’ll offer my own: Varanasi, though holy to Hindus, is probably something of an unhealthy place to be. The streets and alleys are filled with garbage, the manure of livestock and human urine, and the Ganga itself needs years of purification and environmental assistance before it could ever be considered clean, much less pure.
it’s a dirty city.
A litmus test: we noticed more dead and ailing stray dogs in Varanasi than in any other town we had visited in India. They were definitely eating the garbage, but that’s normal in India. Could it have been that they were also drinking from the Ganga? Likely so. As Varanasi relies on the river for all things, the health of the city itself is most likely damaged by the same pollutants that have gone into the river throughout the years.
Do I blame Varanasi for this health scare? Not entirely. It’s easy to get sick anywhere in India – the lack of environmental regulation and the general mass of humanity makes it so. Do I like India any less because of this? No. I still love eating less-than-sterile street food, still am willing to fight my way through nasty traffic, and still sleep in dirty guesthouse rooms. But am I glad we got through the rough patch without too much damage? Hell yeah!
back in action!
On our last day in Varanasi we managed enough ambition to get out of bed for a sunrise boat ride down the Ganga. We descended the stairs to the ghats and accepted the first “Sir, boooooat?” we heard (which took all of ten seconds). Our boat man was a twenty-something in a red button-up.
For 150 Rupees, the boat carried us an hour and a half – enough time for transit from Assi Ghat to just south of Dasaswamedh Ghat and back. The city looks nice in the morning light, which sparkles over the river to shine gently on the east-facing ghats.
Varanasi certainly wasn’t the most user-friendly town in India. It beat us up a little, to be honest.
To keep our spirits up, we had to treat the city and its inhabitants like a mirror: no matter how intense and difficult things became, we forced ourselves to smile back at the irritants/trouble. It felt wrong at first – like defying instinct. But it was right, and it worked.
Every day before we left the room, we gave ourselves little pep talks about how to deal with the touts and the traffic – how to maintain positivity when things were hard. We had to remind ourselves of ideas like the following:
- If one tout is harassing you, he shields you from interaction with other touts. Keep each tout for as long as they’ll follow, and you’ll have dealt with less touts by the end of the day!
- Hawkers LIKE it when you harass them back in friendly ways. The way to access their humanity is by cracking their masks with humor.
- Laugh at everything you can. A lot of tragedy and nonsense will confront you in the day to day. You can’t internalize or bear all of it, so laugh and shake it off. It doesn’t make you a bad person to do so.
- If a stimulus is pushing you to turn right, try turning left. Unpredictability can sometimes get you out of negative situations.
- If your pace of travel/negotiations/anything is moving too quickly for your taste, slow it down to a crawl. It’s the Top Gun “hit the brakes and he’ll fly right by” method, and it works. Control the tempo.
International travel is easy when you have a speedy fighter jet!
I like to think that I’ve taken home some of this mentality – some of this patience.
Boarding the overnight train to Kolkata on April 9th felt like a triumph. We were finally leaving Varanasi, and not a moment too soon – both Cecilia and I had outbound tickets from Kolkata on April 12th. My three months in India were almost over.
Would I return to Varanasi? Of course! It’s an incredibly photogenic, mystical place with more electric energy than most places I’ve visited (even if the power does cut out nearly every day!). Plus, I missed out on a few things while I was there. Namely: Varanasi is a cultural center for music and Hindi language education. Courses are offered all over the city for short-term students and beyond. It would have been fun to learn a few new things, but time ran out, as it does.
Next stop: Kolkata, the big Bengali city
goodnight, ghats.
to Kolkata. onward, steel chariot!
