The city we're now in is Varanasi, and it is considered to be the spiritual capital of India. We're no longer in Rajasthan and are now in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
Early morning walk down to the river
This morning we woke up at 5:30 am to go watch the sun rise from a small boat on the Ganges (Ganga) River. While on our way to the river, our guide told us this city has had three names throughout the ages, Kashi, Benaras, and then Varanasi. The city has 87 ghats, or sets of stairsteps that lead down to the water. The majority of the ghats are used for daily bathing, swimming or religions ceremonies, but a few are reserved for Hindu cremations. Hindus believe that when someone is cremated and their ashes are put into the Ganges in this city, their soul will go to heaven and finally escape rebirth. There are stacks and stacks of wood by the ghats for cremation, and we were told they use the weight of the body times two to determine the weight of wood used for each cremation. It is estimated that 100,000 bodies are deposited in the Ganges each year, but not all are fully cremated, or sometimes cremated at all as not all families have the money to purchase the wood.
Temple along the way
Ganges riverfront
As we climbed into our rickety-floored boat, our guide purchased two small bowls made from leaves filled with marigold and rose petals, and a wick (lamp). A ways into our trip being rowed upstream, he carefully lit the wick of each and then gave them to us to make a wish, and place into the river.
Our guide buying lamps and flowers in little bowls
Lamp and flowers in the water
Our lamps
Sunrise over the Ganges
In addition to the locals bathing and swimming, religious ceremonies, and cremations, we also saw a number of people washing things in the river. They would dunk fabric in the water, swing it out from behind and over their shoulder to slam it on the steps or rock that were sticking out. Once finished, they would lay them on the steps of the ghat to dry. I asked our guide if they were just washing for their families and he told us no, many of them have a laundry business. We also saw many monkeys running the buildings, jumping from one to the next.
People praying and bathing in the river
People bathing along a ghat
Swastika decoration along a ghat wall
Washing and drying
Tired on the River Ganges
Other side of the river
Man rowing our boat
Women praying along the river
Couple praying in the river
Empty ghat
Cremation ghat with stacked wood at top of stairs
Cremation remains
Doing laundry in the river
Drying laundry on the steps of the ghat
Amazingly... there were water peddlers! Just when you think you've found a way to get away from them.
Man selling goods on the river
Cremation ghat
When we got out of the boat, we walked into the narrow streets of the city and did our best to avoid countless spots with animal diarrhea.. not sure what's different in the diet for animals here, but it was a mess. Everywhere we turned along our walk, there was a temple.
Walking in the streets
From there, we were taken back to the hotel for a quick breakfast. Weird.. when we walked in, the hostess told us, "you look like dolls." Anyway.. after breakfast, were taken on a drive by Banaras Hindu University, the school where our guide studied tourism management until 2009. We stopped to visit a couple of Hindu temples, and concluded our temple visits with one to Mother India Temple (Bharat Mata Mandir). This temple has a huge map of India on the floor and our guide showed us the different cities we've visited and several other things.
Temple
Mother India temple floor, map
For our next stop, we drove to the neighboring northeast city of Sarnath. Sarnath is considered to be the birthplace of Buddhism, where Buddha gave his first sermon. There we saw an eighty-foot tall statue of Buddha, one foot representing each year of his life and a Buddhist temple where we were able to go in a small room at the back, but not the main area as there was a service going on.
Flowers in the garden around the statue
Buddha statue
Flower in the garden around the statue
Flowers in the garden around the statue
Statue of Buddha in temple
After the temple, we handed our bags and cameras over to be put into a locker, and then walked through the Sarnath Archaeological Museum with our guide. Once we retrieved our items, we walked through the ruins where the artifacts in the museum had been found, then drove to another Buddhist temple where we were able to go inside. I'd seen statues like this before, but never realized it was Buddha.
Ruins in Sarnath
Monk praying in Sarnath
Inside of Buddhist temple
Inside of Buddhist temple
When we were in the car, we kept passing groups of men wearing orange hats with flags, crammed into backs of trucks and on mopeds, who were cheering and making a lot of noise. We'd passed something similar in another city.. our guide told us it was some sort of political thing.. still not clear on it.
I'd bought a book of postcards while in Agra, so we stopped by a post office to get stamps and mail them. Each card required 15 rupees ($0.22) to send. I had read that mail should be given directly to the post office instead of placed in mailboxes, as the mailboxes are frequently broken into and not canceled stamps, stolen. After the post office, we stopped by a store that helps people without enough income receive glasses.
Barber shop along the road
Our final stop was at a silk store. We were taken downstairs to see three men, each sitting in their own recessed area, working on the loom. There were punch cards that laid out the design for the piece and would determine which threads came forward for the weaving. Some of the more intricate pieces can take a year or longer to complete! Afterward we went upstairs for the usual (in many countries) show, of tons of items and pressure to buy.
Man making silk scarf
Punch cards and silk on spools
Back side of the silk scarf
Tonight Hajar went to see a ceremony called Ganga Aarti back at the river. I was so tempted to go but woke up this morning with a sore throat that quickly progressed to aching all over. With a flight to Delhi tomorrow at 8 am for our final day in India before flying out at 3 am the next morning (no hotel, just keeping our bags in the car all day), I figured I shouldn't make myself worse. Tomorrow will be rough enough lack-of-sleep-wise without being sick. When she returned, she said they passed probably four weddings along the way. Sure enough, as I'm writing this, there's some sort of parade in the streets outside of our hotel right now for a wedding. Lots and LOTS of noise, lights, and fireworks going off... causing a lot of traffic!
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14th Feb: Day 12 Varanasi
Enjoy your breakfast at the hotel & visit different temples & ghat.
Overnight at Varanasi
Today was a pretty long day to get to Varanasi. We left at 10 am for the airport, which took a bit longer to get to than we’d expected. When we arrived, there was a man who looked to be in the military, guarding the door and he wanted to see our passports and tickets. We didn’t have the tickets, so we had to stand in the cold and cross our fingers that the internet would work on our phones to pull them up.. it did thankfully.
After we got in, we walked to another door, to ANOTHER military person and were asked yet again for our tickets and passports. We showed them, and went inside to see an empty check-in counter, and not yet open security line. At 11 am. After sitting for a while, I found someone to ask about the check-in counter and was told to go scan the luggage I wanted to check. So we took our luggage just beside the second guard who had looked at our stuff (and not told to tell us to scan the bags) and put our bags through the scanner. Once the bags went through, they put a sticker seal around the zippers and locks. If you didn’t have a lock, they zip tied your luggage closed! We then went and got in line to get our boarding passes and hand over the luggage.. weird thing is, they didn’t check our passports to give us the boarding passes. They did give us a little luggage tags that we had to put on each carryon item.
At 12 am, an hour later (and hour from our flight), the security line opened. The security line didn’t check our passports either. So the only two times our passports were checked was when they were just looking at a PDF saying our name+flight+date. When we put our things onto the x-ray machine belt, we were told we had to go to another line because we were women. So we had to go maybe 30 feet away from our things as they were scanned, wait, and one by one walk through a scanner that was totally ignored (a ton of monuments and hotels have had them and those too were 100% required and beeps 100% ignored), and then go into a little box of a room with curtains, and be scanned with a hand metal detector and then thoroughly patted down by a woman. She even had me open my locket. Once I retrieved my bags from the scanner, each little bag tag had been stamped to show it went through security.
Stamped carryon tags from two flights
Then when it was time to board, we thought surely they would check our IDs then…. Nope. Definitely different. It was very nice though, we were given lunch! Certainly haven’t experienced that in a one-hour flight in the US before.
The first leg of our flight was from Udaipur to Delhi, and second was with a different airline to go from Delhi to Varanasi. For some reason, we had to get our bag from baggage claim, meet a driver, leave the airport, and be driven… back to the same airport (all this took one hour) but a different terminal… so we could begin everything all over again. The line to get our tickets was so long, I was really afraid we were going to miss our flight in spite of the two hours of layover we had remaining. Thankfully the line only took an hour, and security and the joyous second thorough pat down were quick. Once we made it through, we had to go downstairs to catch a bus to go to our plane. After an hour and fifteen minutes or so of flying… we made it to Varanasi, were picked up (the guy from the agency meeting us had a sign for "Hazar and Laurens"..the last one was for "Mr. Hajar," hah!), and arrived at our hotel around 7:10 pm.
We had dinner at the hotel buffet. I had another tomato based gravy with paneer that was really good.. just forgot to take down the name!
13th Feb: Day 11: Udaipur airport drop & Varanasi Arrival
Enjoy your breakfast at the hotel & Drive towards the Udaipur Airport to board a flight 9W 938 departing at 1300 hrs to Delhi.
Arrival Delhi airport Terminal 3 at 1410 hrs. Exit Delhi airport & my car will pick you up & will transfer to Terminal D1 to catch flight SG 269 departing at 1700 hrs to Varanasi.
Arrive Varanasi airport at 1825 hrs & transfer to Hotel Radisson.
