Time to Go

Eva and I are at the end of our travel time in India together. By the evening of the 31st she’ll be on a train bound for Kathmandu. I’m gonna go to Delhi, hang out for a bit before going back to Dharamsala.

We came to Varanasi by train from Amritsar. It was a grueling 24 hour train ride in Sleeper Class, the 2nd lowest class to travel in. It would’ve have been easier if we were in the women’s coach, like we requested, and if it wasn’t so hot and humid the entire way to Varanasi. At times it felt like the train ride from hell. I started developing a heat/skin/diaper rash because I was sweating so much and the sleeper surface was sticking to me. We had bought fruit for the ride, but it wasn’t enough. I ended up feeling so sick on the ride. The train food is all deep fried foods like samosas (potatos wrapped in dough deep fried), potato pakoras (potatos battered in flour and deep fried), and veg cutlets (mashed potato patties breaded and deep fried), The samosas were pretty good, but I could only take that for one meal. So I made it into a fasting train ride. By the time we reached Varanasi, we were completely beat. Thankfully we arrived when it was still light outside, and after a 30 minute heavily polluted, rollercoaster-esque rickshaw ride through the city, we came to our guesthouse.

Varanasi is one of the holiest Hindu places in all of India. It’s bordered by two rivers, Varuna and Assi, which meet in the Ganges. Hindus from all over India and the world come to Varanasi to worship, practice and die. Every night, sons from the brahmin’s caste perform a fire offering to Shiva. And every time hundreds of people gather near the river for the two-hour ritual of fire and incense, music, conch shell blowing, clapping, singing and praying. Despite how polluted and filthy the water is, it’s considered very auspicious to bathe in the Ganges. It’s believed that if a Hindu is cremated in Varanasi and their ashes put in the Ganges, they will return back to the five elements (fire, water, air, earth and ether), and will be able to escape the cycle of rebirth. Many people come to Varanasi near the end of their life just to wait to die. One section of the riverbank is the designated crematory and the fire has been burning for 1000 years. Bodies just keep coming and coming. It takes a lot of wood to completely burn a body, and usually people don’t have enough money to buy that much wood plus pay for all of the funeral dressings, so many bodies are only partially burned and what’s left is put into the river.

There are two areas where they cremate bodies. A couple of times while I walking, men carrying a corpse to the burning ghat passed by. That kind of thing is normal here. And for some reason I wasn’t really shocked when I saw it. Around the burning ghat are several fires and a line of bodies waiting for cremation. The smoke is really thick and ashes fill the air. There are also huge piles of wood all around the ghat. Women aren’t allowed near the burning bodies so the burning ghat is almost all men in white robes and many of them have shaved heads.

Yet despite all of the piety and holiness that exists in Varanasi, there are also so many strange contradictions about this place and the people here. The cow is supposed to be extremely holy. They take so much from the cow except eat it. Varanasi is full of cows all over the city, in the streets, in the alleys – everywhere. But they let them just eat trash. I don’t know if a trash dump exists, because trash is everywhere, all over the streets and in the alleys. And the cows eat from it, including the plastic bags that are in the piles. Then many of them choke or become sick and some of those die.

There are also stray dogs everywhere. Most of them have terrible diseases. They, like the cows, eat from the trash piles in the cow-shit covered alleys. The other day I saw a dog lying on the side of the alley, barely any hair left on its body, ribs showing, struggling to breathe and later I walked by again and it wasn’t breathing anymore. I’ve never seen a dying or dead dog before. The local kids play mean tricks on some of the dogs. Eva saw two dogs with their butts or balls glued together. They were crying in pain because they couldn’t separate. The kids who did it were standing nearby laughing. When the dogs finally split apart their butts were red and bloody.

Between me, Eva and Diklar, a really cool Israeli girl we met, we’ve been harassed disgustingly harassed by stupid, sexually-frustrated, ugly, annoying, repulsive Indian men. It’s a huge problem in India. In Dharamsala the harassment was verbal, and now that I’ve come to cities, it’s physical. The first time it happened was in Amritsar when this kid selling postcards shoved them in my face and then grabbed my boob. And then tonight some old man came by and grabbed my butt. It’s so disgusting. Out of reflex I turned around and hit him but he just walked off. It happens to so many female travelers I’ve met. And even to the local Indian women. And many of these men are really pathetic creeps. You can see it in their faces. I try to invoke the compassionate Buddhist in me, but really I just want to punch them all.

I started to feel really homesick being in Varanasi. The combination of all of this intensity – the filth, the sick-debilitated-starved animals, the seediness, the religious zeal, the flies, the tourist touts, the humidity and heat, and my lack of direction, leads me to feel like I want to be home.

So it’s time to move on. I’m leaving Varanasi and going to Delhi. And from there, who knows.