A religious man prepares to bath in the Ganges waters just before sunrise

A white haze floats across the surface of the Ganges river as the sun rises in the east. On the bank a burning wood pyre, atop a cloth wrapped body is placed on its journey to the next life.

Twenty meters down stream a group of young men are vigorously washing white sheets in the brown polluted waters, around them children and men enjoy an early morning wash.

Varanasi is a strange city filled with touts, telecommunications towers and rickshaws, but it is still the holiest in India. The myths state that the town was created by Shiva (God of Gods) as a gateway to the next life, although I have doubts a god would have created such a mix of twisting alleyways, poorly built roads, rubbish infested gutters and monkey filled golden shrines.

The top of the sinking temple by the banks of the Ganges - during the monsoon the temple is nearly completely underwater

I never planned to stop in town but some hassles at the Indian/Nepal border and shear stupidity of the Indian train ticket booking system meant that I get to hang out with the two Americans, Natalie and Faye, for a few more days, which is far more appealing than spending 40hours in the general seating of an un-air-conditioned train surrounded by cows, goats and the odd chicken.

I’ve spent 3 days in Varanasi and am still amazed with the city, its’ people and the fact that life still revolves around their religious beliefs. Walking down any of the alleyways near the Golden Temple you stumble upon small shrines to the hundreds of Hindu gods, all liberally coated in bright orange and red dye which the faithful use to bless themselves and their children every morning.

The 5am sunrise boat tour is the last activity on my schedule and is a must for any visitor to the city, as evidenced by the others vessels filled with tourist snapping photos and pointing at the hundreds of Indians filing down to the Gatz, steps on the edge of the river, to wash.

Young locals fish in the polluted waters of the Ganges just after sunrise

The Ganges, and river side Gatz, are the impressive part of the town. During the dry season, now coming to an end, the river is only 50m wide, shallow and very slow moving. Standing on the banks however you can see that during the monsoons the river will expand to nearly 1km.  Parts of the city go underwater and the river depth must increase by nearly 20m or more. The torrent of water that gushes down past the Gatz is enough that last year a tourist boat carrying 20+ people turned over, killing 14 of the occupants.

While in town a it’s hard not to visit a place called The Monkey temple. Mainly because the travel guides describe the monkeys as curiously aggressive.  The temple itself is not much to behold although the best part came as we were exiting and a local man, quite clearly very religious by the way he blesses everyone’s feet, filled our hands with blueberries and we spend half and hour hand feeding the gangs of monkeys that seemed to appear out of thin air. Well I say we, Natalie and myself fed the monkeys as Faye kept her distance.

Before leaving this city the girls jokingly invited me to join them in a Yoga class, you’d have thought they’d learnt their lesson when jokingly inviting me on the hike. Now I’ve done the western yoga at the gym, once, I was forever put off by the sight of a rather bendy man in very short shorts. Even with the image of Mr. Bendy in mind I accepted the offer and at 4pm was lying on my back ‘letting myself feel the floor’. The experience wasn’t actually that unpleasant, all be it a couple of times I had to stifle a laugh as it was explained that the current posture would ‘open my fallopian tubes’.

Varanasi is worth a visit if you’re in India, but 3 days is plenty of time to see the sights, any more and the town would get a tad draining. While my stop here was unplanned I’m glad I got the chance to see the Ganges, the burnings and the city, but now I have a 30 hour train ride to Mumbi and then a 14hour bus ride to Goa where I’ll sit, eat and do very little for a month or so.

So from the dirty, heavy metal filled waters of the Ganges

GK Out…

Check out a Slideshow of images from Varanasi HERE

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