On The Ganges, Varanasi, India

Night descends on Varanasi. 365 days, 400 festivals. Down to the Ganges, the holy Ganga, all roads lead to.

Marigold garlands, oil candles, incense, rice offerings. Walking through red splashes of betel nut spit, red tooth dentistry. Watch the cow. Sitting families on the rough stone steps that lead inexorably to the river, into the river. Everything comes from and returns to the river.

Darkness now, the full moon watches us all. The revolution of the cycle, there is no end, only rebirth. Life is roaring through me, pushing, tugging, holding, jostling, bumping. It’s the streets. To know one you need to know millions. Stories, pictures, images, soaking through the dirt of my temples. Reading “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie at present, slowly he and this are making sense. But never can it.

Fireworks are let off, great hoary skyrockets from an overcrowded boat, sparklers, showers of phosphorous. Crackers booming. Hand held skyrockets, away they fly, sometimes not too well and crash and explode into the boats crammed 50m out into the river. The closer they explode the more the excitement. A thronging passion. Boats trailing lights behind them.

Fathers lifting their children above the crowd to see the lanterns and dancers. A live band, tablas and sitars and everything wails through a PA to make AC/DC proud. The nut seller, mixes and stirs. Vendors and beggars and the office dwellers and the holy and the merchants and everything colliding. Parents dropping kids pants to relieve themselves on the pavement, steps lined with beautiful glittering candles. Cows eating what they can. Tourists freaking out when locals talk to them.

Mothers, in their finest silks, pushing their kids into my arms to get a better look from where I sit, on the edge, the observer, the outsider. Yet inside enough to have an unknown kid shoved in my arms, to stop them falling. I speak to Nisha and her sisters, curious and bored at the same time. Fleeting connections. I stroke my beard, as Salman says, to stand out in India you have to be grotesque.

On it goes, into the night, like the river, forever.

Day

Day is an hour away. 5am alarm, the river calls me. My throat is constricted, like something crawled in during the night and is now collecting a toll on the fetid air that I breathe. Black snot, black lungs. Down dark alleys, the old town, to the river. Full moon still watching me.

Beggars lining the path to the river, everyone comes this way. Early locals giving rice to them. Street cleaners scuffling in the gutters. The boatmen wait on the stepped river bank. The refuse of the night before pushed aside. A price is negotiated, a deal, the deal is always first, then proceed. Madhal, our boatman, pulling his oars against the current. Keeping close to the shore on our right. Moonlight on early bathers’ faces.

Clothes washers smacking the dirt from cloth onto rocks. A Gangetic dolphin jumps, breathes. Glow of the red sun to our left, rising above the distant sand bank and treeline. Its rays, cutting through the dust and fumes, form a red ladder on the river, beckoning me away. Old maharajah palaces, rough peeling plaster, guest houses now.

Morning Bathing Rituals on the Ganges

We turn upstream, warm winds from the new sun waft on me. Down the middle flow of the river, down down. The pink and red hues of the buildings lit up. Hundreds now on the river. Brushing teeth with sticks. Morning washing. Prayers, thanks, rituals. Submersion into the flow.

We stop at a burning ghat, 24 hours a day operation - 3000 rupees for a wood pyre, 150 rupees for the modern gas. Only sadhus, lepers, pregnant women and children are not burnt, instead straight into the river, pure. A man sits on the bank, looks calm. I take a photo of his funny constricted pose. Later, I find he’s dead. A pilgrimage to your death, a burnt image on my mind. A beautiful morning for it. Flies gathering now.  Now a corpse in the river, white like a, er, corpse. Innards falling out.

Back to where we started, resisting the river. The washing, the purification, the relief the river instills, continues on the banks.

All come and go, I go, more come, to the river.

This is the first of a three part series recounting Bruces’ personal trip through India.  All photos are copyright and personal property of Bruce Thurlow and Travel Generation.