🙂 Ganges. Spiritual.
🙁 Ganges. Crows feeding on corpse
Varanasi is said to be the point at which the first jyotirlinga, the fiery pillar of light by which shiva manifested has supremacy over others gods, broke through the Earth’s crust and flared towards the heavens.
We flew from Kathmandu to Varanasi – our tummies were not great … and we were really concerned about safety of plane! The views of the Himalaya were however spectacular! There was no form of queue at immigration – it was a free for all! There was a sign that stated ‘ No Dogs. No Irish. No South Africans.” !! When we finally got through customs we were assaulted by a gang of taxi drivers begging us to choose them. We got in a taxi which was promptly pulled over by a policeman and then the taxi driver was arrested for not having a licence! We had to disembark and by now the gang had already lynched other arrivals but luckily we found another driver to argue about cost with. He promptly ran out of fuel within a minute of setting off. It was in the midst of a festival and there were thousands of people milling about alongside cows, pigs, bicycles and smelly pollution. An absolute assault on every sense! Smells … do not even want to know what they were … potentially a mix of decaying flesh and sweet incense … the sun was fiery as it set amidst the noisy chaos. Booked into ‘Vishnu’ a cheap and dingy room which, on the positive did overlook the Ganges – Rs10! Dinner was served on the roof! Cheese and spinach curry – quite delicious! We had only been in India for 2hours and were already stressed and exhausted! 51Rs : 1GBP!
We were up at 05h00 and wandered aimlessly through convoluted narrow alleyways until by pure chance we emerged from the maze onto Dassawamedh Ghat – which is where we wanted to be! We negotiated Rs15 for an hour in a boat. We had a young cocky chap who chatted endlessly. We passed people bathing, washing their clothes, performing religious rituals, squatting and pooing liquid into the water, cremated corpses floating by with crows picking the exposed ribs and dogs running off with the larger bones… quite something to behold. Scindia Ghat was slipping into the water. We also saw river dolphins! The Ganges river dolphin can only live in freshwater and is essentially blind. They hunt by emitting ultrasonic sounds, which bounces off of fish and other prey. We were really surprised that they live in such squalid waters… This river trip truly provided great photographic opportunities! Paul was not as excited as I was about the splendour of the Ganges at dawn…in fact he referred to it as the S Bend of life. In the end we paid our chap Rs50 for the hour as he complained so much! I reminded Paul that it was only £1!
Just an incredible place to experience…
When we disembarked we were completely lost and there are no street names so we wandered aimlessly through the maze and miraculously made our way back to our roof top and enjoyed puri and dahl breakfast – divine! We then discovered that this dilapidated place was in fact NOT the Vishnu House that we had requested to be dropped off at but rather the rickshaw’s cousin … aaargh – it really was a dump! LOL. We checked out much to the cousin’s chagrin and booked into the real Vishnu Rest House – a haven in comparison! We wandered the streets in awe of the chaos – dodging elephants, cars, bicycles and hoking rickshaws who seemed intent on running us over … the noise! Beeping, electronic synthesisers, cows mooing, donkeys braying, dogs barking, goats and pigs squealing, camels snorting and people screaming …Just WOW. Rats the size of dogs and cockroaches the size of rats!! The cow pats which were being moulded into walls added to the smell of general decay. I think the photos tell most of the tale… unfortunately these were film camera photos and the sun damaged the negatives so the quality is poor. Managed to find a place that sold beer which we enjoyed with sag paneer and a korma … Paul was desperate for a poo but they only had a latrine so he had to push the peas from his poo through the hole! Hysterical!
I went to see an astrologer who had read for Goldie Hawn in December 1992. He predicted the following for the years of my life which lay ahead:
17-28 (Mercury) These were going to be tough years, bereavement, turmoil in love, hard work, travel.
28-35 (Venus) Study, children, working hard, travel with work.
35-55 (Sun) Successful, earning plenty of money, travel, working in media.
55-71 (Khetu) Best years – Prime of life – partnership and great wealth, revered by society.
71-76 (Mars) Period of ill health but recovery – continued partnership and lots of money.
76-96 – retire on an island. Will have 3 large properties. Retire physically and intellectually active. Kidney problems for me and stomach problems for Paul. 4 children. One child will study animal husbandry, two Doctors, Trent very successful when he is aged 34.
Fascinating….
Bought 2nd class tickets to Agra and then 1st class Udaipur to New Delhi for Rs900.Followed by a little mongrel dog who had been stoned by boys and had latched on to us for being kind…he wouldn’t leave us and kept following and wagging his tail. Poor little mite – the stray dogs are heart breaking…
Go to: India
Go to: Agra
