Varanasi

Varanasi is an interesting city- frustrating and exhilarating in roughly equal measures. The actual city of Varanasi is a sprawling urban centre, unattractive even by Indian standards, but this all changes as soon as you get to the river. The Ganges, India's most sacred river, runs past one side of the town- a vast flood plain stretches toward the horizon on the opposite bank. All along the river for about a mile in each direction are the ghats, stepped stone approaches to the river, used for various purposes ranging from cremation to bathing; washing clothes to cleansing the soul. Varanasi is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world, although not in it's current state as most of the buildings have been repeatedly destroyed thanks to a succession of Muslim invasions. It's almost mythological age coupled with it's proximity to the Ganges, or Ganga in Hindi, have served to make it one of the holiest sites in India, certainly the most sacred city.

However, Varanasi is not all fun and games. It suffers from vice and virtue in similar measures, and at similar extremes, the vices being most apparent upon arrival. Firstly, centuries of pilgrims and tourists have inspired an almost unparalleled greed amongst the rickshaw touts and shop owners- in fact the auto drivers will rarely take you where you want to go unless they are sure of a vastly inflated price or a hotel commission (we were dropped off a good 2km from the river, despite our drivers insistence that it was 'just down the road'). While to some extent this flaw is present everywhere in the subcontinent, it feels a lot more pronounced in Varanasi. The second thing that hits you about the city, in particular the old town, a rambling labyrinth of interconnected alleyways and passages which runs parallel to the river, is the dirt. Being Hinduisms most sacred urban centre, the whole town is full of cows (although I can't hold it against them- the animals in themselves are lovely!). Combine this with hundreds of goats, water buffalo, chickens, stray dogs, rats and a few thousand monkeys and you might get an idea of what it's like to walk the streets of Varanasi. And they all shit everywhere. The old town really does feel old- medieval. It brings to mind of primary school history lessons when you hear stories of rubbish just being thrown into the street from windows and doorways- apart from unreliable plumbing and inconsistent electricity, going into old town could be like going back in time six hundred years.

But all this is t o detract form the inherent beauty of the place. A walk along the ghats or a morning or evening row across the Ganges really brings home the tranquility of the city, literally metres from the teeming urban sprawl of the centre. The ganges is beautiful, the sunsets are beautiful and the buildings are beautiful- you can't walk for more than five metres without tripping over a temple or shrine which could be anywhere between five hundred years old and five weeks old. And that brings me on t he the most enchanting characteristic of the city- the people that inhabit it and visit it. For Hindus, bathing in the Ganges removes all sin, rather like a baptism in Christianity. For pilgrims and residents alike the the river is a living Goddess, and it shows. And the ghats are a 24 hour hive of activity. In the morning there is washing an bathing, in the day fishing and boat rides and chillum smoking sadhus, in the evening, every evening is an hour long ceremony in praise of Shiva, and all day, everyday, are the cremations. Hindus believe that dying at Varanasi, along with a handful of other places in India and Pakistan, can liberate the soul from samsara, the repetitive cycle of life, death and rebirth. Those who die within the city or by the banks of the river achieve nirvana instantly, and this is a powerful draw to Varanasi for those with the money to afford the journey. The cremations are a regular part of life in the city, whether it is narrowly dodging a wrapped corpse in the improbably fast funeral processions through the meandering alleys of the old town or quietly observing the peaceful, sombre and public cremations on the ghats. You always seem to feel close to life and death in Varanasi, and it is one of the most spiritual and inspiring places I have ever been. You even learn to deal with the less desirable aspects after a while- it makes a trip to the shops for a pack of cigarettes far more exciting.