Where people come to die...

On the river Ganges, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh


The Ganga Arti (prayers to the Ganges) in process at Dasaswamedh Ghat

This is just about the best place you can visit in India – Varanasi (also popularly called Benares), the holy city of the Hindus, the place where many Hindus would want to die in (…die at, …aww, what the heck, if any of you know the correct preposition to use, please tell willya?), since dying here is supposed to release one from the cycle of birth and death, or moksha. Great huh, you can finally die, …for good.

Besides dying, Varanasi is actually great for many other things. You can take a gulp of the water from the holy Ganges, wash away your sins, and in the process kill yourself and attain moksha (it’ll be a miracle if you survive anyway, don’t believe me take a look of the Ganges here yourself). You can take a dip in the holy Ganges and while away time watching the multitude of things that can float on water sail by, boats, garlands of flowers, lit offerings to the Gods, a stray bra or underwear, empty plastic bags and bottles, unidentifiable floating objects, crows having a good time dining on the carcass of a buffalo… You can have a swell time tracking across the 2km stretch of Ghats lining the revered Ganges river visiting hidden temples, learning about the different types and costs of wood used for burning up dead bodies, chatting with the holy men, and the not-so-holy, who’ll try to sell you stuff, show you stuff, or pry stuff (especially money) out of you. You can explore the narrow lanes and hidden alleys near the ghats and play hide-and-seek with the cattle (who’ll take up the entire width of some of the alleys), dogs, goats, monkeys and dangerous looking people, all the while holding a hankie to your nose, so that you won’t faint from the exotic smell of incense, dung, urine and garbage. You can shop till you drop at the streets and streets of shops (believe me, the bargain shoppers (aka women) will love this place, but luckily for us men, the smell of this place will hopefully limit the natural tendencies of our better half huh?). You can practice your oratory skills, in Hindi if not in sign language, with the uncountable rickshaw-walas who’ll try to ferry you to any place, except the place you wanna get to, all for the sake of showing you the sights of Varanasi, or more likely to waste your precious time, piss the shit out of you, and get extra money for ferrying you back to the same place you’ve started from so that you can get another rickshaw, who’ll try to play the same trick on you, and the cycle goes on…

So, wanna experience India at its best? Visit Benares.


A bored security guard at Munshi Ghat


What a local hotel boss does when he’s bored…


Somewhere near Manikarnika Ghat, Varanasi


The rickshaws of Varanasi, …Yes, it’s always this congested (…ok, maybe not at 3am in the morning, but who’s gonna be up to find out huh?)

…but come to think of it, on a less cynical tone, and to be fairer to the city, I actually kinda like Varanasi. Amid all the chaos and hustle and bustle, Varanasi has its subtle charm, like something surreal, some lifestyle of the ancient past which is still very much alive today. This is where you can catch the soul of Hinduism (…if you can somehow ignore the greedy, and the crooked), this is where you can experience the real India with all its colours, customs and culture, this is where a lot of foreigners come to seek spiritualism, jam music and just, chill out. I think there’s hardly another place with as much connection to its past and to its after-life than Varanasi, the city where people come to die…


An offering to the Ganga...

India Update: To Bake or to Steam

Greetings from Bharatpur! Bharatpur has been our new home since the 20th of May, and the house we’re now at, is our 7th home in line since our runaway marriage (and you thought marriages were predictable). Bharatpur is in the state of Rajasthan and is located along a highway connecting Agra (the site of the Taj Mahal, India’s most famous landmark) and Jaipur, The Pink City (another tourist attraction), and therefore lies within the so-called Golden Tourist Triangle (Delhi-Agra-Jaipur), where most tourists to India visit.

Bharatpur has been consistently hovering at about 47 degrees Celsius for the last few days (I’m not exaggerating). At home it is about 41 degrees (well, that’s what the digital read-out says on the air-cond in our living room anyway). Our brand new China-made Sensei-brand split unit air-cond is super-efficient at bringing down the temperature, …from 41 to a minimum of 39 degrees, after 2 hours (no, we didn’t leave it on for a longer time, …what if it overheats?) We’re in the process of getting the wireman who installed it to come back to have a look at it (still not much success – his mobile phone has miraculously stopped working, hopefully he’ll come before winter).

At the mean time we’ve got a desert-cooler to do the job of cooling down our bedroom. For those who don’t know what this is, it’s a big fan enclosed in a box with a water pump. You fill the bottom of the box up with water, switch on the pump, and walla you get water flowing down the inside walls of the box. The cooler only cools down the immediate space in front of the fan, so our bed is aligned conveniently in the middle of nowhere and partially obstructing the door, no, can’t move the cooler, it has to be just outside the darn window.

Our entire floor is white marble. White marble is fabulous, for retaining heat. The white marble in our house retains heat so well, it’ll still be warm at 5am in the morning, and then the sun rises, and God heats up the marble again, and the cycle goes on. We tried flooding the bedroom with iced water to cool it down, …it helps for about an hour before the water dries up (or leaks to the landlady’s room below, …well, let’s say, she complained).

Our walls aren’t marble, there’re brick walls (with very little mortar I presume, since that’s how Indians do brick walls anyway) plastered all up and painted with white-wash (meaning if you lean on the walls, you get free chalk on your clothes, body, or whatever comes into contact with the walls), and yes, like the white marble floors, their heat retaining qualities are simply superb.

Bharatpur’s water is from the ground and is very rich with minerals, ...should be, since it’s bloody salty. The water in our bathroom, like the floors and walls, is perpetually warm. Doesn’t matter what time of day (or night) it is, the water is warm (or hot, in the afternoons), and so is the shampoo, soap, face wash, toothpaste, lotion, hair gel, etc. The best time to shit is early in the morning (like what your parents teach you). If you’re in need of losing some weight though, then shit at the other unrecommended times, and in the process, get yourself a fabulous free steam-bath.

Apart from getting cooked alive, Bharatpur is actually quite an interesting place (from what I hear, no, I’ve not gone around the place yet, not at this time, I’m not crazy). It has loads and loads of animals – monkeys to terrorize the shit outta you (yeah, they like to sneak into your house …real silently, and catch you unawares), dogs which wallow in the mud-pools together with the buffaloes and wild pigs (and I thought dogs hate water), but can’t blame ‘em, it’s either dirt or die by slow-cook. And the best of Bharatpur – a lovely tree-filled internationally known, bird sanctuary (really, no kidding) with wild peacocks, antelopes, cranes, etc etc etc but it’s just a mystery to me why any bird would wanna come to a hellhole like this???