Varanasi wins the award. And I love it. This is the most relaxed I've been the entire trip. I would never have thought that some city taking 2nd or 3rd place to Agra, Jaipur, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Goa, Kerala, etc... could be so interesting.
I've been wandering the arms' width alleys, the ghats, the vendors' shops that line the alleys, eating food from various restaurants just because they are there and menu's fare sounds delectable.
I had first real Indian yoga class here. No Western brand. I guess you could call it hatha for lack of a better descritption. Today I am feeling like iron thrown against the wall and turned to putty. Sooo good.
I've seen the two "burning" ghats where families' take their dead to be creamated on pyres near the holy Ganges. After the creamation, the ashes are let into the river. This is perhaps, for a Hindu, the most auspicious way to pass into the next life.
Tons of offers for boat rides on the Ganges. I've been laughing because the offer is "cheap for you my friend, only 100 rupees." But my wacky humor knows it's 100 rupees to the other side and 600 rupees back.
By the way, the ghats, what are "ghats"? Well, they are like piers but they run parallel to the river. each ghat has a somewhat distinct flavor and design. Some are more grandios than others - the ghats built by maharajas have spectacular temples and shrines.
Many Indians do bathe in the Ganges regardless of the water condition. And working in that particular profession, and even if you don't, I am amazed at the willingness with which people enter the water. There is absolutely no sewage control, trash control, water buffalo control, nothing. It struck me funny the contrast that when in CA, if we have a heavy rain, the beaches are closed due to 0.001 ppm of methyethyl death. We are truly blessed to have the environmental controls we have - sometimes I wonder about the excess we freak out. But, that's the way of the world of my friends. Now, the Indians see foreign tourists (department of redundancy department) as walking dollars, I see Indian pollution remediation as serious dollars.
So as Varanasi goes, it is a town that now I understand Dawn's description - "you are just so happy to actually make it back home to bed that night. That's the day's accomplishment." I now have lived that. Almost been crushed by a water buffalo in the alleys, or run over by a motorbike, or lost for ever into the black hole created by the Super Conductor below Switzerland - it is in Varanasi.
