Burning ghats and sexy temples
Trip Start
Jan 09, 2005
1
54
93
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
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Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India
Friday, January 30, 2009
Varanasi:
Varanasi is one of the oldest cities in the world and holds a lot of religious significance for many people. One it's main draws is the Ganges river; believed to provide purity to the living and salvation to the dead; and people will come from all over to bath in it, drink from it, and even put some of the water into a vile to take home. Of course the best way for many to truly experience the Ganges is to be cremated at it's edges and become a part of it forever. It must be noted, however,that the river is no longer as clean as it once was and now has become a public bath for humans,animals and a dumping zone for a chemical plant upstream (and of course any body parts that aren't fully cremated end up in there too) ; that said, this does not deter the Indians from using it on a daily basis.
We arrived and took a rickshaw to a listed guest house in the book only to be taken to an impostor guest house with a similar sounding name; this is very common and is even forewarned in the book. After many attempts at trying to reach the requested guest house (the drivers kept taking us to their friend's different places so they could get commission) we finally just went with one of the suggested guest house called Elvis guest house. The place was decent enough and the staff was extremely helpful and nice so we were happy. That said,we have since met up with and made friends with people that stayed in Varanasi for several weeks and it turns out the area to stay is near the Dashaswamedh Ghat. This ghat experiences everything we did on a much grander scale and is more in the heart of where things are happening.
On our first night we walked along the Ganges with the guest house owner and he spent some time explaining some of the things we were witnessing. The first was the cremation area or burning ghat. The ghats are cement steps that run into the water and run all up and down the Ganges (there are about 100 total) and at the top of each ghat is a temple, palace or restaurant terrace. Each ghat has something unique to its area which can range from bathers, to brahmin priests offering puja to the river, to washing clothes, to yoga/meditation, to the cremation area (this is in two different ghats).
The burning ghat we walked to was the smaller of the two areas and had a building that is a 24 hour crematorium The more popular way is to hold a ceremony right on the river bank and stack many logs up and place the body on top and light the body on fire Darth Vader style. I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like this in my life. We happened to arrive just as a ceremony was starting and the body still needed to be placed on the wood. Once placed, the brothers walked around the body three times before adding dust (I can't remember what it was) and the oil (ghee) and then placed it on fire. Since this man's father is very important, there was a huge crowd. There was another man being cremated closer to the waters edge and the only part of him you could see was his head. There is always someone there to watch and make sure the body is tended to and burned completely (though as I said parts sometimes get missed and end up in the river).
Just a little further up, past the burning ghat, we saw a slightly touristic Punjab ceremony. There were three monks standing up on a wooden platform "dancing" with metal trays with candles that had been lit by the people below. There were a few musicians playing on the side singing and what seemed to be the overseer wearing only a loincloth covered in dust and strings of beads. It was cool to sit and watch for a while.
The next day was the Kite Festival and the entire town took off from work and school to fly these paper kites. I tried flying one and they are super hard to get up in the air so I was really impressed by how many kites were flying that day. We walked all up and down the Ganges on the ghats and explored the area in the daytime. The Dashaswamedh Ghat (the one I recommended) was full of stuff to keep you occupied and just sit and people watch. There are several men that massage on the open planks and they will come up and start massaging you hand to get new business. Greg hadn't been feeling well so he decided to try a full body massage- as you can imagine, he was quite the spectacle and many people sat around watching him; never mind the Asian monks doing the same exact thing a few feet away.
While Greg was getting pampered I sat nearby just taking in our surroundings: the other masseurs hard at work (they were all men so only men can get massages- same sex), the priests on their platforms blessing Indians that visited them before being "cleansed" in the river, some darker Indians with paint on their faces sitting on steps asking for money and food as people passed by, people walking around selling yummy food snacks, kids selling postcards and bindis, etc. I heard that later that night the kite festival was pumping at this ghat and the nightly Punjab celebration we saw near us was way bigger at this ghat as well. Bummer we missed it!
We eventually wandered to the Lotus Lounge which is a pricer restaurant and is on an open terrace over the Ganges (great for people watching) and serves super yummy food-I even got a salad, my first in India. From our view we were able to see a bunch of the fireworks that were let off that night in celebration. Since we were in the sleepier section of town it seemed like nothing was really going on so we just hung out back at our guest house.
On a side note, it is very common for beer and alcohol to be prohibited in cities across India (especially religious ones). The way restaurants and guest houses get around this is to leave alcohol and beer off the menu and literally serve it under the table. I met a girl who said she wasn't even allowed to put the beer on the tabletop! This also means that there are very few bars, and not that I've been to one, but I've heard that there are only dudes at the bars since it would not be appropriate for an Indian woman to be at a bar. There are many double standards for the women here, they can't stay out late or get drunk without being labeled a slut and they definitely can't smoke and go to bars.
The next morning we took a boat tour with our Belgium friend for a few hours. It's common for the boatmen to charge ridiculous prices to take you around but we were able to get a pretty decent priced ride and since the boat ride is a must-do, I think we would have paid more anyways. We started near our guest house and went up towards the larger burning ghat, about an hour there and an hour back. It's such a cool experience to see the ghats from the water and even more fun to snap all kinds of photos you could never get from on land. Once we got to the end destination, the larger burning ghat, we saw the same cremation process as we had before but on a much larger scale. We even saw a man tending a fire lift what little was left of a body out and put it back in; I don't think I need to see that part again. The ride back was just as calm and fun to snap shots (fyi it's not really advisable to take shots of the burning ghats and you'll definitely be forced to give a "donation" if you are caught).
Over all I was disappointed with how little we did in Varanasi; we didn't get up at 6am to see the morning bathers and yoga practitioners on the edge of the Ganges, we attempted numerous times but didn't go through with taking a tour of the religious buildings and I think by staying in our location also missed out on some of the Varanasi activities. That said, I plan to come back to India some day and will make sure to hit up Varanasi again. I did take a motorcycle ride through town with one of the guest house owners to the post office. Since the post office was way on the other side of town I got to see a different side of Varanasi which was cool.
We stopped along the way for him to get more Paan from a small stand (they are all over India). From what I understand it's sweet tobacco that you put in your mouth and suck on like snuff and spit out the red juice. The red juice stains the teeth and you can see splashes of the dried stuff all over the streets and sides of buildings. It comes wrapped up in a leaf and a dab of cream is put on an open leaf that tthe wrapped tobacco is placed on - you dab the cream and then put the wrapped leaf in your mouth and commence spitting.
The post office experience was unlike anything I have ever experienced. I had a plastic bag of some souvenirs that I wanted to send home and lighten up my pack. There is a man sitting out front of the post office that packages up belongings and he got to work on mine right away. He covered the bag in plastic burlap and then sewed it shut. Once it was sealed, he used the red wax that we've all seen in movies used to seal letters, and then stamped the wax with his metal stamp. This was done all over the package as a way to prove the package has not been opened whenever it reaches its destination. The cost of sending the package via ship is comparative to the souvenirs but worth not carrying it around and will take 3 months via ship (so they say).
Khajuraho:
Getting to Khajuraho was a total pain as we were stuck waiting in the train station until 2am for a very late train to arrive; I'm starting to realize late trains are the norm here. At least we had several families of monkeys that lived in the rafters of the terminal to keep us entertained, hehe Since our train got in so late it made us miss our connecting bus to Khajuraho which meant we would have to wait for hours until the afternoon bus arrived pushing back our arrival time even more. We banded together with a German, Chilean, Australian and Irishman and took a 6 passenger taxi which shaved hours off a bus trip and worked out better for us anyways. We had intended on just staying for the day and heading out on an overnight train but since our transportation got so delayed and we continued to hang with our new friends, we ended up staying several days..
Khajuraho was a breath of fresh air for us. It's a small little town with a few annoying touts but overall very chill and a great place to ride a bike since there aren't auto tuk tuks or cars all over (this also means a break from the constant honking and noise pollution). We pretty much spent a lot of time just hanging out with our new friends and taking it easy and Khajuraho was the perfect place to do so. We stayed at the Yogi Lodge which I would recommend... there were a few mosquitoes but the staff gave free mosquito coils which seemed to work fine. Food-wise we found an amazing thali place on a rooftop next door to the Mediterrano. Stay away from the Raja Cafe! Despite being warned by fellow travelers that they got food poisoning, we still ate there and while we never got sick, the food was not that good and super pricey since it's got the great views of the temples.
Our last night in town we met some friendly locals that invited us to a welcoming home party. The host had just returned from living and working the past 6 years in Japan and his family wanted to throw a party in his honor. We were explained that there would be a big feast later that night at the party which would be held somewhere in a field near the woods. We drank the customary chai with some of the party goers beforehand to get a feel for their "vibe" and figured why not. We ended up arriving a little after the set time to ride out to the party and things got a little too weird and inconsistent for us so we ended up ditching out after all that.
Overall I highly recommend hitting up Khajuraho. The town is so calm compared to so many other tourist stops and if we had more time we definitely would have rented bikes. It's a great place to hang out for a few days even if you hadn't intended on it.
Things we checked out:
Hindu Temples:
We took a half day guide of the Western Group temples with our friends Dave and Jonathan (It's more economical to take a guide with a group and we were fortunate enough to have friends with us). The guide was a little hard to understand as his style of English took a little getting used to. That said, he was a wealth of information and talked for hours and hours in great detail about the buildings and answered any question we had whether it was temple related or not.
From what I gather, no one truly knows why the temples were built and there are various beliefs as to why they have Kama Sutra sculptures all over them. Our guide explained that the whole point of the temples was to show the importance of falling in love with a partner, getting married and being monogamous, and creating a family. He said the Kama Sutra part was just artistic flair and it showed how not to behave because there was no meaning in being physical with someone (or several people as some sculptures showed) you don't love. I also heard the temples were built because the town's population was dwindling and there were no men left to procreate so the images of the sculptures were supposed to entice monks. Ha! Whatever you believe, the temples are just incredible, the design and detail are amazing.
Matangesvara: This Shiva temple is still in every day use just outside the enclosed western group and they hold ceremonies every night and morning around 6:30. We stopped by one evening to watch as puja was offered after walking clockwise around the shivalingam 3 times. It was an interesting experience and all in Hindi (I assume or one of the other thousand languages spoken here) so I don't really know what was going on other than people would go up to the shivalingam (a huge 3 foot wide pillar in the middle of the group) and bow down and kiss it. The whole ceremony was quite short so it's definitely worth checking out if you are in the area.
Feel free to check out pix/video of Varanasi, Khajuraho and Agra
http://www.flickr.com/photos/greggoodman/sets/72157613117056685/
