Late morning on Monday, October 5, and we step off the train into yet another quite warm autumn day, this time in hectic Varanasi, at the eastern edge of Uttar Pradesh. Though we’d be going to Delhi/New Delhi on the noon train tomorrow, I didn’t realize at the time that this would be the last of my photo shooting in India for this trip. (We were in Delhi for roughly 48 hours, but I got sick from train food on the 18 hour journey between Varanasi & the capital. Since the capital seemed way too smoggy, dirty, congested, disorganized…I didn’t feel like I’d missed out terribly, though there were a few places I would have liked seeing there.)
I’ll finish this posting on a good note, though, and focus on Varanasi. Before getting there, I wasn’t terribly excited about the tourist attractions I’d read about, but that’s not why people come to Varanasi. Varanasi is to Hindus what Mecca & Medina are to Muslims, or Jerusalem to Christians. It’s their holiest city. On the banks of the Ganges, people come here to die, then have their ashes spread in the river.
Varanasi has a lot of poor and indigent people as well, who come and hope to be cremated and buried in the river, and there are a few places that serve as pseudo-hospices to help them. They tend to try to collect donations from anyone to afford to pay for the wood – it’s a specific wood they use for the cremation – so they can help these people.
So Varanasi is an interesting place. There are many ghats (ghat is like…a pier, or a place where you can access the river), and the most famous are probably Dashashwamedh Ghat (the liveliest and most colorful) and Manikarnika (the Burning Ghat). There are many other ghats, as well, and some have specific histories attached to them.
For me, the best plan was to stay in a hotel near the ghats in the Old City so we could enjoy the sunrise and stroll around. The Hotel Alka was my random choice, and it turned out to be good. It’s cheap, riverside, has a decent restaurant (though, as it’s a hotel restaurant, not as good as many of the others where we’d eaten in the past two weeks), and overall a comfortable room.
After getting checked in (and this place was pretty crowded), I took a shower, then headed off with a local guy who gave me a tour of the Old City. Now, a word on that… It’s not recommended that you go with any local who offers because most of them will steer you into various businesses, or towards people who are all too happy to try to get your money. I was very firm with this guy, though, and told him the maximum price I’d pay regardless of what he showed me, and that he should plan accordingly. He didn’t, and was a bit disappointed when I paid him exactly what I said I would.
The tour included stops at a few temples – they all started to look a bit alike after the second one – and at Manikarnika (one of the places where you’re herded and they try to make you feel guilty if you don’t fork over five million dollars to pay for everyone’s cremation). The last stop was at his boss’s store, well away from the old city, over in the Muslim Quarter, where I had to sit patiently through a whole lot of lecturing on textiles and their pleading that I buy the entire building. I tried to be as polite as possible with the last part, stating up front that I wouldn’t buy a thing before going in, though that disappointed them to no end. In the end, perhaps it’s better to go on your own…
After about four hours with my guide, it was already dusk and the city actually felt less safe than others. (There were a lot of police out and about.) It turns out that there wa s a religious ceremony that the police were banning this particular year for some reason, so there was a bit of tension. And since Varanasi isn’t a city that is lit up much at night, there wasn’t much to see, so I was glad to just get to my room and call it a day.
Waking early on Tuesday morning, I caught the sunrise over the Ganges, then wandered up and down the ghats for an hour or so. This really was an interesting experience as it seems the entire city comes to bathe in the river, and everyone seems pretty happy. There are plenty of boat tours, too, which I skipped, as I just wanted to take a walk.
After an hour or so of wandering the riverside, I went back to the Alka, had breakfast, and enjoyed my remaining few hours just watching the sun rise higher before heading to the train station for the unofficial (though still unbeknownst to me) end of this trip to India.
In hindsight, this was a terrific two weeks. Though I enjoyed Uttar Pradesh, I wouldn’t go out of my way to return here – unless going to different parts of the state, and I would certainly include a trip to Agra in that – but Rajasthan…I would gladly go back to anytime. However, India has a lot to offer, and I’m not sure if I’ll return here or go to different parts of the country. Anything is possible…
