Tuesday 6 November 2012

Hey Everyone,

So I made it to the first stop on my trip, Varanasi, on 10/29.  I took the train with this American guy Brian who was at Belur Math and also happened to be going to Varanasi about that time.  We figured it would be safer to travel together since Indian trains are notorious places to get all of your stuff stolen.  He left for the Himalayas a while ago and I'm staying on until the 15th.

I'm having a pretty good time so far.  When I first got here I spent a ton of time exploring the city on my own.  Varanasi is one the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, so its layout is totally insane.  The part of the city where most of the temples and tourist stuff is is called the old city.  The streets are only these tiny allies mabye 10 feet wide at the most.  They're crowded with people, motorcycles, cows, goats, tons of dogs, cats, children, and the occasional water buffalo.  The most interesting part of the city is the ghats.  Varanasi is built right on the Ganges, and the streets that dead end into the river turn into this long system of stairs that stretches the whole length of the city.  Different stretches of stairs have different names, and collectively they are know as the ghats.  These stairs extend mabye 40 feet down into the river (based on what I've heard and my guess) and built into them are tons of shops, temples, lounging places, and other buildings.  The most fascinating thing about them is that when the river rises during the rainy season, the ghats, including the shops, temples, etc. go underwater and are eventually covered in mud.  When the river recedes the government sends these guys with big hoses around to blast the mud off of the stairs and reclaim the ghats.


The cops here are also pretty fascinating.  They're more like a para-military outfit.  They carry these old Russian and British weapons, mostly World War Two era, and their only concern is keeping traffic moving and checking for bombs.  It's not the safest place in the universe, but there's a lot of Westerners around, Westerners and Chinese.  My American pride has been pretty wounded by the lack of American tourists and the heavy Chinese influence.  I was under the impression that China was pretty much a third world country, but there's Chinese people all over the place over here who don't seem to have any less money than any of the white people.  I've only seen a few Americans, virtually all the other westerners are Europeans.  Again I pretty much thought that the US was the only country in the world, or at least the most important one.  But over here, besides the big multinational corporations, the US is a pretty abstract concept.

So anyway I'm having a good time.  I'm sick of the city and I'm spending most of my time nowadays just relaxing at the center.  I leave on 11/15, after Kali Puja, for Mayavati.  I'll close with some pics.

Rip



Brian posted on the Indian train.  The train ride was like 10 hours and it went by pretty fast.  We sat next to some Russian guys and it was a good chance to see the Indian countryside, which has some pretty beautiful parts.  It's good to know that not every inch of India is filthy and disgusting (even though the train pretty much was).

 View of the Ganges from a hotel at Varanasi

 Varanasi from the Ganga just before dawn

 Sunrise on the river

 The city just after sunrise
 Another view of the city from the river.  If you look closely in the center you can see a fire burning.  That's one of the many burning ghats, places where dead bodies are cremated, around Varanasi.  Varanasi is a holy place to die according to the Hindus and walking around you see lots of funeral processions with people shouting and chanting going by.

 Here are some of those guys hosing the mud off the ghats.  Like I said, they do this every year after the waterline drops, unveiling all kinds of stuff that is buried by the mud for part of the year.

 For example this temple, which still has some time before it will be fully out of water.  Its foundation is starting to slip into the river bank causing it to lean.

 Varanasi is an old old city.  Here are some ruins I saw along the ghat, notice the cow hanging out in front.  The cows in India are basically just big rats or raccoons.  They live off of the trash and charity of humans just like any pest, and since no one kills them they are all over the place.  There pretty cute though, especially the native Indian cows, and if they didn't shit all over the place I would say we should get some for the US.

 Another view of the ghats.
 A view of the city from a rooftop restaurant.  It might be a pretty good shot if it wasn't obscured by the monkey-proofing job.

 If you look closely you can see a troop of mischievous monkeys scattered throughout this picture.  When these monkeys came around, people got out on their roofs with big sticks to try and keep them from causing trouble at their place.  It was pretty awesome to watch from behind our monkey proof cage.

 Another boatman I met.  He let me try rowing for a second and it was insane.  I couldn't move the boat at all.  Not only do these guys have to be really strong, they have to know how to maneuver a boat and have to be able to fight currents in the water and stuff.   They make bank though.  A boat ride costs 200 rupees per person per hour, about four dollars, and this guy gets to keep half.  To put that into perspective, anyone who makes above a hundred rupees a day (like 2 dollars) in India is not poor.  So this guy does get bankrolled for his toil.

 Temples like this are dotted all over the ghats, built into different nooks and crannies.  It's hard for me to imagine that this was totally buried in mud just a little while before.

 Shops and stalls built into the ghats.

 A quieter section of the ghats I found to chill at.

 This dude is washing his water buffalo.

 This guy's fishing.

 After the bath the guy chains up the baby and leaves the mom off leash to wander around and graze on whatever trash she can find around.  Presumably that guy will be back later to collect them.

This is the night worship at the Ganga.  

With obsequious pranams,

Rip