January 13 - January 15: Varanasi

Varanasi is a crazy place. Bathing and burning ghats line the shore of the Ganges River. Pilgrims come from all over to bathe in the holy, heavily polluted river. Bodies are also burned here 24 hours a day and then the ashes are spread into the river. When I visited one of the burning ghats, there was 12 bodies simultaneously being cremated. (Each body takes about 3 hours to burn.) The old part of the city is a tangle of narrow alleyways filled with little idols and worship nooks. A festival was going on, so there was hundreds of kites in the sky and many special ceremonies and sadhus. It was a great place just to sit back and watch.





On Tuesday, I took a sunrise boat ride on the Ganges River.