From Mumbai we cheated again and flew to Varanasi, believe us we saved some travel pain. Varanasi is a place like no other, we'd heard so much about what it was going to be like, but as they say, nothing prepares you for the reality. At best, it has only a passing interest in the modern world, which isn't to say people don't like money, after all that's a long standing love all over the world, but what makes it ageless are the sights, smells, people and rituals, and especially those smells.
Varanasi had a couple of things we'd be happy to never see again - the bloated body of a sadu (holy man) trapped on the anchor ropes of the pontoon bridge, children swimming in a river that can only be described as putrid, and deprivation around you all the time. Mumbai and her slums had energy and there was money, but Varanasi is like an old, bent-backed lady, who has nothing, except her routines and rituals. Ritual is everywhere all the time: ritual prayer, singing, cremation, shaving, washing and play. As our highly informed readership no doubt knows, when a Hindu dies, part of their ashes should be mingled with the waters of the great mother Ganga, if you die in Varanasi you're cremated on the banks and all your ashes make it into the river and you have the added bonus of dying in a place that ensures you're spared the pain of re-birth and get a one way ticket to Nirvana.
The cremations where the simplest and most striking for us. The claim that the fire used to light every pyre has been burning non-stop for three thousand years sounded a little tall, but it's what everyone believes, so who am I to argue.
Varanasi also had plenty of exuberant Indian tourists, we like these guys, almost as much as they like their children practising their English on us. India's middle class has cash and they're currently on holiday, the only tricky question we get is - what's different about India? A question we found surprisingly hard to answer.
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