Sunrise on the Ganga River...not as beautiful as it sounds.

July 1st, Day 6 of our Journey through India: As we walk down the concrete steps toward the bank of the Ganges River, there are people sleeping everywhere, men in white with dyed orange hair sit praying to the river already at 4 in the morning. It is a foggy, dusky morning and the air is stale and hot. A little baby is sleeping on a step with his body on a blanket but his little head is lying right on the concrete. A girl sells us floating candles with flowers for 10 rupees each and we get into our boat. Picture murky, stagnant, green water with a thin layer of iridescent pollution film lying on top of it. As the sun begins to rise you can just barely see a faint orange circle through the thick gray curtain of foggy sky.

Our boatman rows downriver (although the water isn't moving so I suppose it could have been upriver too) and we start to see all the people swimming. Some are bathing near the bank, some are swimming across, others wash their clothes by beating them against the rocks. Above the banks are little shelters and platforms, then higher up are castle-like forts. Everything is painted so many different colors but the colors are muted and peeling away to show the underlying wood and bricks and mortar.

Just a little ways farther past the bathers and swimmers are the funeral pyres. We see 2 different pyres which look like regular campfires from far away, but up close we can see that they are carefully stacked wood poles with a body on top wrapped in a sheer white cloth. Atop the body is more wood poles in a line from head to foot. The family members of the deceased are all men, dressed in white with shaved heads and no facial hair. Our guide tells us that it is believed that women are too pure of heart to witness the ceremony, so only men participate. Before placing the body on the wood pile they bathe it in the river. They then place it on top and walk around it 5 times. Next they uncover the head of the deceased and light a fire in the center of the wood structure with a palm leaf. It was so hard to fathom that people believe the river is so holy that bathing next to dead bodies could be cleansing. After watching the funeral service we turned the boat around. About halfway back someone spotted a dead body floating face down on the bank of the river and not 50 yards away were children and men swimming and bathing.

Seeing the holiest river in India wasn't quite the moving spiritual experience I had anticipated. Instead I feel kind of like there's a huge pit in the bottom of my throat. We exited our boat in the middle of a bunch of naked men bathing and they didn't seem to mind at all, they just kept on. We walked up to the sidewalk and were immediately harassed by people selling illegal photographs of the funeral pyres and knick knack souvenirs. I've finally figured out if you offer a firm 'please stop' instead of 'no' or 'maybe' they tend to leave you alone. The walk back to the bus was through these terribly narrow market streets overrun by cows and people cooking and dogs fighting and dead rats. Strange fluids were being thrown from the top of buildings down onto our street, animal dung was everywhere, people were sleeping in the road, and with all of that the hot sticky air was kind of trapped in without any breeze whatsoever. There were a surprising number of guards with guns and our guide explained that there is a lot of tension between the Muslims and Hindus, especially near the solid gold temple located right near all these market streets.

Finally we got to the main street again and headed back to town for an afternoon of more temple tours and shopping. Around 4:30 we boarded our train for Kolkata. We were a little worried at first since the train had no sheets or curtain or pillows but the sheets and pillows came eventually and the lack of curtain ended up yielding a great opportunity for conversation with an Indian student from Kolkata. He had been visiting Varanassi and was backpacking. He had just graduated with a degree in economics and was taking a year off to choose his path in life. After we got to know each other a little better we started describing to him our morbid experience on the Ganges that morning. We talked about it at great length and he helped us to realize a lot of things. Varanassi is the oldest city in India, it is as old as Babylon and therefore it is so deeply rooted in tradition and religion that even government, let alone environmentalists cannot change the way people are with the river. The Ganga is absolutely sacred to the Hindus. Even a few drops of its water is considered purifying because they believe the water is the goddess Ganga flowing eternally from Mount Meru, the house of all gods. When they bathe in the water they absolutely know and believe that they are cleansing themselves of the 'karma' of previous and future lives. This prepares them not only for death but for rebirth afterward as well.

After talking to our new friend JP (don't worry, we exchanged facebooks) I decided that even if I cannot understand how a person can be so unconcerned with the sanitation of the river, what I can understand and appreciate is a faith so strong that what is practical and sensible can be overruled by what is spiritual and holy. When America became a country this city had been practicing their ceremonies for over 2,000 years. And I wonder why I find it difficult to compare Indian and American cultures when people ask me. I try to explain that in terms of developing a culture, India has had a bit more time than America.

Well, about to arrive in Kolkata. JP says we should expect it to be mildly cooler, drastically dirtier, and full of Communists. Haha. Here we go again!