Day 16

Everyone says what a crazy, packed, messy, and cheating city Varanasi is, so when we got off the train in the morning, me and Arjan were prepared for the worst. So we were rather surprised when it seemed to be the calmest railway station we've been in so far, with hardly anyone pestering us. Sure, we might have slightly overpaid for the rickshaw to our hotel, but when it's still well under $1, it's hard to feel cheated.

Unfortunately 8:30am isn't the best time to check into a hotel. So we had to wait a bit, but while we were waiting we had breakfast, and charged it to our room, and we think that they may have gotten us a room faster than normal just so that they could have a room to charge it to. Ever since my gastrointestinal issues cleared up a few days ago, I've been on an eating rampage, and the buffet-style breakfasts at these hotels provide a good way to gorge myself. I think I was lucky that my issues were acute but short-lived, and I've been able to dive right back into all the Indian food; for the others, the problems seem not quite as intense, but more long-lasting. For the first week here we ate somewhat irregularly, and that combined with a couple rounds of the loosies made me look really skinny when I stepped out of the shower. But now I've been eating so much that I'm sure I'll weigh more when I return than when I left.

Back to Varanasi, we caught an auto-rickshaw over to the ghats, the steps leading down to the holy Ganges river. On the way, the driver pulled into a gas station, and we thought "oh, we've seen this trick before!" In Jaipur a driver did the same thing and asked us to pay for the gas (which we refused, and he continued on). So when this guy stops and asks if we have 50 rupees, we're all ready to read him the riot act, but then we sheepishly realize that he's only asking because he was going to spend his last small change for the gas and thus wouldn't be able to give us change if we had larger bills. It's not a cool feeling to be suspicious of everyone, and it's made even worse when they act in a perfectly honest and friendly way.

To get to the ghats, you have to negotiate a maze of narrow alleyways on foot (which makes them the first thing we've seen that an auto-rickshaw wouldn't squeeze through). I was surprisingly reminded very much of the alleyways in Venice, except that Venice has a lot less cow shit. But that shows that Varanasi is still a living city, and everyone we passed (including the cows and goats and dogs) in their doorways and in their shops seemed very relaxed and friendly. You just need to look down every time you're going to place your foot somewhere.

After making a bunch of random turns around blind corners, we finally made it to the river. Maybe it was just being away from the traffic for the first time in a while, but everything again seemed quite relaxed and peaceful. There were people washing clothes, people bathing, and the occassional man asking if we wanted a boat ride, but nothing really high-pressure. I was beginning to think that there must have been a convention for the National Tout and Huster Association going on in Chennai, and so they were all out of town.

We basically walked the whole length of the ghats from north to south. Along the way we saw just about everything imaginable: holy men, swimmers, herds of cows, loads of laundry, kids playing cricket, kids flying kites, bodies being burned, people dumping stuff in the river, people cleaning stuff out of the river, mounds of drying cow pies, and a little girl carrying a pan full of fresh cow shit on her head.

At one point in the afternoon, we even just sat down and relaxed, which I then realized was something that we'd hardly done at all on this trip. With the sounds of a group of people singing Hindu ragas wafting down from a building high above us, and the quiet river life continuing on below us, it was a one-of-a-kind experience.

As the sun was setting, we hired a rowboat to take us for an hour long cruise up and down the river. We returned to the central ghats just as the elaborate nightly prayer ceremonies were getting into full gear. There was a lot of chanting, music, singing, lights, fire, and gold. And tourists. There was an oddly Western-mannered young girl selling lighted flowers to float down the river, and as me and Arjan sat on the steps watching the ceremonies, she asked "could you watch these for a few minutes? I'm going to get a drink", and she ran off. Oh great, we thought, here comes some kind of scam. So we were astonished a few minutes later (though by this point we really shouldn't have been), when she simply came back for her flowers. And she didn't even bug us much at all about buying some.

So as far as I could tell, Varanasi seems to be another Gary, Indiana: a place whose reputation is far worse than the reality. Sure, you have to keep your wits about you at all times, but that applies to anywhere in India. For me, it was one of those unique places on the globe that you will never find duplicated anywhere else, and it was easily worth the 30 hours of train travel to see it for a day.