TIMEZONE 7 - INDIA

home | facts | travel log

[click to zoom]

varanasi

December 5-7, 1998

"Rowing back in the dark, while the funeral pyres burned on the holy burning ghats and bells rang ominously in the distance..."

We got our train tickets from Gorakpur to varanasi at 4:30 pm, and our train was to leave at 5:10 pm. We had paid 420 Nepali Rupees plus 90 Indian Rupees, and we noticed that the price printed on our tickets was 45 Indian Rupees. (So we paid a little too much.) We crossed the street to the train station, found an information booth, and inquired as to when and where our train was leaving. Earlier that day, we had heard "5:10 platform 4." The man in the booth said, "7:10 platform 6." Two more hours of waiting, but we decided to head for platform 6 anyway. Strangely, there was a train at platform 6. It was 5 pm so we asked a well dressed Indian man sitting on the train through the barred window, "varanasi?" and he said, "Yes, varanasi!." So, we asked "5:10?" and he answered, "Yes, varanasi, 5:10!" We boarded the train, still uncertain and a bit confused, found some open seats and asked everyone around, "Train to varanasi?"

During the first part of the allegedly 5-hour train ride, five 15-18 year old Indian boys surrounded us. They asked questions about us and America like "How is America different from India?" (A difficult question to field.) "Who is our favorite hero?" (like Michael Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio, etc.) They wanted Mike to play his guitar, but he was too nervous about pulling it out on the train. They bought some nuts, laughed at us as we ate them, and tried to get us to pronounce the names of things in Hindi. The kids then proceeded to do as 15 year olds will do: they had us repeat words in Hindi, which they claimed were the names of train stations, but, based on their laughter, we were fairly sure we said some pretty unpleasant things.

After they got off, we stretched out on the benches, but not for long. At the next stop, so many people got on the train that we were forced to squish 4 people onto a bench which barely fit the 3 of us! As things let up, two people got off from the bench where Jeff was sitting. As Mike was about to move from his bench to sit next to Jeff, an older Hindi lady, colorfully dressed, with smelly painted bare feet, decided to lay down on the open bench, and stretch out so her feet were tucked into Jeff's fleece (the new one!). Several efforts to get her to sit up were made by all the Indians sitting around us which only resulted in mumbled Hindi that kept the people at bay. Finally, we just started laughing, and waited for someone else to leave.

When we got to varanasi 7 hours later, we piled into a motorized rickshaw with all of our bags, and began the search for a place to sleep. It was 11:30 pm, and we were tired and hungry. We had been traveling for 19 hours and just wanted to stretch out. Before we left Kathmandu, we had picked three places where we would meet Josh in varanasi. The first choice was full, so was the second, and we never found the third. At the fourth place, which we tried at our driver's recommendation, they told us they were full. However they told us they could give us a double with an extra mattress, and that we could have a triple the next day.

Us: "Is the kitchen open?!"
Drunk Om Vishnu manager: "Yes."
Us: "We'll take it!"

The next morning, we walked along the Ganges River, where there are numerous bathing ghats (stone steps leading into the water) where people wash, bath, pray, play and socialize. We hoped to find another guesthouse; one that wasn't dirty or full. We found the Homy Guest House: a friendly family owned and operated joint. We checked out of the dirty Om Vishnu with a little fuss from the manager: "but sirs…..I saved a room." Our place at the Homy was very homey. When we woke up in our rooftop room, several monkeys were hanging on our barred windows looking in at us. We sat in our room relishing the role reversal of us in the cage and them on the outside.

varanasi is a city that you would picture in your mind when you think of India: crazily intertwined alleyways, that leave you nowhere but lead everywhere, ancient buildings, forts, temples, and bathing and burning ghats all along the ancient Ganges river. During the monsoon season, the ghats are covered by the river and, consequently, a lot of mud. The following nine months are spent trying to clean off the hundreds and hundreds of stairs using pressurized water shot out of hoses. We walked along the river, and saw a dead cow get tied up and rolled down the steps toward the river where it would eventually sink to its final resting place.

In the afternoon/evening, we took a boat ride down the Ganges River to an Ancient fort/palace that the varanasi Maharajas had once lived in. With Sati, our boat driver, we enjoyed the pleasantries as he tried to explain in broken English the holiness of varanasi and the Ganges River. The sunset through the haze was incredible. Rowing back in the dark, while the funeral pyres burned on the holy burning ghats and bells rang ominously in the distance, was enough to send us off into a trance-like state. That night we decided we would wake up at 5:30 am, rent a boat, and have a fruit breakfast out on the river as the sun rose over varanasi and lit up the ghats. The sunrise was cool, but not nearly as beautiful as the sunset. It just goes to show: you should never try to top a great experience with more of the same.