Transformations and Reincarnations

More updates for you! We have temporarily skipped over our beautiful stay in the mountain town of Darjeeling to bring you fresher news - the past four days in Varanasi! Again I will narrate for you through pictures, as going through each of our days would take the rest of my trip, and besides you all need to get back to work soon and stop goofing around reading our blog!

We survived a long train journey to get to Varanasi, aided by several mud cups of "chai, chai, chai". These got tossed out the moving train's window. Fun!

We downgraded to sleeper car, the non-air conditioned, more crowded method of travel. The insides of our lungs got a nice coating of soot by morning, but otherwise our sleeping platforms suited us just fine.

A shout-out to all the nice Indian families who helped us through the journey. We always have helpers around, whether it is a family waiting to translate the announcement for which platform our train is arriving on, a young girl who helped me jump off at a stop to buy vegetarian briyani, or a crowd of men who literally chased away a sketchy old man who was paying us too much attention in the station. Thank you all!

We spent many hours looking at towns like this one fly by the train window.



After haggling with the auto-rickshaw drivers who only want to take you to hotels that give them commission, we finally arrived at one very dirty but nicely air conditioned room. (There is a heat wave in India currently, the hottest temperatures they've had in eight years, so we splurged on our first AC room since Laos.) I won't lie, we spent a good few hours of our first day doing our laundry, cleaning the bathroom floor, and even scrubbing some walls in that place. It looks great now, you're welcome next guest.

Varanasi immediately stole our hearts. For those of you non-Hindu's, it is one of the holiest cities in India. There are religious activities going on any which way you look, and especially along the very holy, if very polluted, Ganges river. We woke up at dawn one morning to take a boat ride along the river and see the sites. Besides for some of the coolest breezes we've felt here, we saw the bustle of early morning on the Ganges. Hoards of people come to bathe in the river.


Bathing is not simply to clean themselves, but is part of a religious ritual. After bathing they go up to temples and shrines located by the riverside for prayer.

Here is a father and son looking out on the activities of the river in the morning.


Nighttime is also a busy time along the Ganges. There are nightly religious ceremonies performed, and you cannot help but to run into some prayer, music or dancing going on.

And now a non picture-filled interlude, for there is an important part of Varanasi life that cannot be photographed. Varanasi is particularly holy because if you die here, according to Hindu beliefs, you achieve moksha, an escape from the cycle of reincarnation. Anyone who is able to bring their loved one to Varanasi for their funeral does so. Bodies are cremated along the river, in huge bonfires. Onlookers are invited to walk right up to these bonfires, see the torsos of the bodies sticking out from the fire, and watch as flesh melts away from their faces. It is a haunting experience. We learned so many interesting facts about the cremations - how much wood it takes to burn a body (250 kilos), how the first son of the deceased must light the fire and once he leaves the body he cannot look back so the spirit of that body does not follow him, how a man's chest and a woman's hip do not burn and are deposited into the Ganges, how Shiva makes sure that even through a rainstorm the fires will still burn, and much more. We returned a few times to observe this fascinating ritual, though could never stay for too long before our eyes started to burn from smoke.

The streets and alleys of Varanasi provided us with days more of entertainment. There was always some excitement going on. Here I am looking very excited.

The first thing you notice about the city is that it is overrun by several different factions - humans, of course, but mixed in are water buffalo herds, wandering cows, trash-eating goats, friendly dogs, and mischievous monkeys. We could put together a whole album of our animal shots, they are too funny.

As usual we did our share of baby stalking. We were haunted by the dark eye makeup applied to some small children, supposedly so that others cannot look into their eyes and steal their souls.

Sarah and I also worked on perfect our 'India chic' style here. After a few shopping trips we are now starting to blend in more, resulting in somewhat fewer stares and unwanted attention.

Speaking of shopping, that has been another favorite activity of ours. Great cheap clothing here! The shopkeepers are excellent salesman, and can lure even tough nuts like Sarah and I in to their stores to buy goods we didn't even know we wanted...

But we refrained from entering this shop shown below, which sells some things you just don't want to have on your bed.

Yes, the streets of Varanasi kept us quite entertained. We tried to capture some of the chaos of a bicycle rickshaw ride in the video clip below. Tonight we head out to Khajuraho, and then on to the Taj Mahal! Until soon.