Varanasi

We had an uneventful trip to Varanasi via Delhi, although it was strange to have a taxi driver point out the India Gate yet again on our ride from the railway station to the airport.  The journey from Varanasi Airport to our hotel however took ninety gruelling minutes, much of it inching through the insane traffic in the City centre.  Sue needed to rest, but that evening I had a stroll along the Gats and took this photo.

On our first full day in the City we took a long walk through the centre and along the major Gats before returning exhausted to our hotel, a pleasant and more or less tranquil spot in the heart of the mayhem.  On day two we visited the run-down but fascinating Hindu University museum before again walking the Gats back to the hotel.  Both trips were broken by lunch at the Dolphin rooftop restaurant.

What can you say about Varanasi that hasn't already been said?  Actually, it was all the stuff that has been said that was the problem.  I came here with so many pre-conceptions that I expected to be overwhelmed and perhaps gain some new insight into life and death.  Well it is kind of overwhelming to the senses with so much life and colour exploding around one, so that almost everything you look at is a separate rich tableaux of burning pyres, temple entrances, sari and sweet shops, con men, monks and gurus.  And yet at the same time its effect on my brain was really quite relaxing and wandering the Gats by the banks of the Ganges was more like strolling along the prom at Eastbourne on acid, rather than living out scenes from Dante's "Inferno".  Death, which I expected to be ever present, took much more of a back seat than I expected.  I saw no burning bodies and heard no communal keening, just big stacks of wood being weighed and the odd fire, with the occasional body whipped through the backstreets by the special caste of pall bearers.

If I've taken any moral lesson from this fascinating and ancient city it's that here there is a place for everything from birth to death and all the stuff in between, including worshipping, posing, swimming, doing your washing, ripping off tourists, grazing your water buffaloes, flying your kite, playing cricket or just having a laugh with your mates and that all those things are completely normal things for humans to do and it's entirely appropriate that they should all be going on at the same time.

I must say I'm very glad to have been and unsure whether I will ever want to come back.