13. The Sacred & Profane: Ganges Holy Cities

More pictures this time! 

Funny prelude: while passing through Delhi, I had lunch with a man I'd met at Moustache before traveling to Leh. He was back where he'd grown up to dispute an inheritance land settlement with in-laws. He told us he'd been waiting 6 weeks for a court process to complete. It turns out they simply needed a copy of a document made, but the court photocopier had broken. Since documents can't leave the courthouse once a trial has begun, they had to wait 6 weeks for a repairman to fix the photocopier before they could proceed with the case. So India! This is a great example of the type of situation I run into almost every day.

On my way between the northwest of Ladakh and India's Northeastern States past Bhutan and Bangladesh, I traveled from Delhi along the Ganges (still avoiding Agra and the Taj Mahal). I visited many of the Hindu holy cities before reaching the hill station of Darjeeling. Each had its own particular character, verdant and hippy Rishikesh charming me with its high walkways suspended over a still small and fast-moving Ganga / Ganges, Hardwar providing a remarkable Ganga Aarti fire ceremony every evening, and the tranquility and history of sitting under the tree in Bodh Gaya where Siddhartha first attained enlightenment. Varanasi provided the most noteworthy experience for me, which follows.

Rishikesh

View from my guest house of Laxman Jhula bridge over the Ganges.

Boy selling flower petals to launch into the Ganges.

Local (sufi?) sharing a morning chai with me at a tea stall.

Typical Rishikesh street, filled with yoga studios, handicraft shops and cafes.

...buuuut, this is India after all.

Me with one of the feared red monkeys. They take a look into their eyes as aggression and will attack, but I fooled him with my front-facing camera!

Hardiwar has a bigger nightly celebration of Ganga Aarti, but the one in Rishikesh was special. I found the chanting more communal and melodic, and something about the enthusiasm of the man in red as he waved his burning thing around was very moving.

Hardiwar

Hardiwar's version of the Ganga Aarti.

We had to move off the bridge, but I was lucky to get right in the middle of the crowd and directly opposite as the ceremony took place.  While this went on, people continued to bathe in the Ganges and float the little 'boats'  with flowers and a candle down the river.

Bodh Gaya

Monks at the Bodhi Tree. This is an actual descendant of the original tree that Siddhartha (Buddha) sat under some 2,600 years ago.

Procession of junior monks heading God-knows-where. No, wait...

The tired and disabled waiting for the train.

Bus heading to Putna. Free Bollywood movie!!

Varanasi

While sitting in the small nook that is the Blue Lassi, purported to make the best lassies in at least Varanasi, I heard a chanting procession pass by on one of Varanasi's dark, narrow, and dingy streets. I realized immediately this was a funeral in progress heading to one of Varanasi's "burning ghats" (wide sets of steps that descend into the Ganges) where Hindus are cremated to release the soul and enable it to proceed to the next life. This is the most holy act for a Hindu, and Varanasi's Manikarnika Ghat is the most famous and reverted of all the places this is done.

Varanasi street (source: http://static.panoramio.com/photos/medium/96527147.jpg)

Beautiful tree on the campus of Banares Hindu University, a highly-respected university in Varanasi.

So I quickly downed my lassi, tossed the clay cup (the Ganges deposits a LOT of clay silt, and the broken clay is sometimes used to fill potholes, which is better than plastic garbage), and I hurried off in the direction of the procession. As I approached the ghat, several locals shouted warnings to me that only family members could go that way, but I remembered reading that this was a classic tout intended to divert you to a watching spot from which they could charge you a fee. So I continues straight believing that if this was really the case, the family themselves would tell me soon enough. Sure enough, I walked unimpeded past many people and huge piles of special logs (the family is charged according to the type and weight of wood selected, and the science of how much wood is required has been honed over the centuries) right down to where the funeral pyres sit next to the Ganges itself. Here I saw several smoldering pyres with ashes ready to be collected and put into the Ganges, and two more piled high with firewood, awaiting their mortal vessels.

Water buffalo on the Ganges.

I saw a procession bringing a body down to the Ganges on a light, wooden stretcher. The body is totally enveloped in white fabric, and this is covered by many beautiful flowers and shiny gold-colored embroidered cloths. While the chanting continues, the throng dip the body into the Ganges, which, by the time it reaches Varanasi, is pretty filthy I must say (even though many kids are seen playing and swimming in it). Then the bearers remove the decorative cloth and place the body onto the stoked funeral pyre. At once, the stretcher and its mat of sparkling decorations are unceremoniously dumped over into a growing pile of stretchers and decorations in the river, no doubt to eventually be carried away with the current. 

There is some pause before the pyre is lit by one of the attendants, and I had a hard time distinguishing family members from attendants and general onlookers like me. I think there is a family ceremony on top of one of the ghat buildings but I may have missed this between different cremations taking place. Either way, on top of the ghat building where a ceremony was taking place, I could just make out some of the relatives chatting between themselves, and others engaged on ubiquitous cell phones.

Cremation taking place at the Manikarnika Ghat: You're not supposed to photograph the cremations, but I was so overwhelmed I broke the code with a rear-facing selfie.

Eventually the pyre is lit and the wood slowly begins to burn. Based on my culture's practices, I expected some age-old spiritual ritual with all participants standing somberly at attention. Nothing of the sort. Nothing was said, and few people seemed focused on the body slowly being consumed by flames. Even more overwhelming was the fact that a dog happened to be pissing on the pyre while some itinerant water buffalo was chewing on the garlands that had fallen amongst the rubbish littering the site. All this time, I continued to have locals approach me and ask in hushed tones "hashish? you want excellent hashish, Sir?" Even if I replied "no, I'm Buddhist, I don't smoke. Tanya wad [thank you]", they would quickly react with "oh, would you like relaxing meditation, Sir? best price just for you". Through it all, they appear oblivious to the ceremony taking place just a few meters away.

I'm not relaying all of this out of disgust. As different as this ceremony was from something I'd see in North America (remember, I'm traveling to see differences, right??), I was more shocked by the way in which Indians, seemingly without any internal conflict, routinely mix very serious, spiritual matters with totally mundane and crude human activities. This is so Indian. This place is a constant jumble, a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds, of logic and chaos, of tradition and instinct, of the sacred and the profane. You really have to let go, to check your expectations, and to go with the flow.