Varanasi and onwards

Dearies

Boy oh boy: it has been nearly a week since I last blogged and so much has happened.

I liked Varanasi. (Apart from the unrelenting attempts by auto drivers to rip you off.) It was a spiritual and moving place; so I was seriously in two minds about missing Goa and staying in Uttar Pradesh to discover its secrets... In particular, I liked its narrow streets, its shops overhanging pathways, dripping with trinkets, colours, and scents; the cows roaming the streets, making it impossible for traffic to circulate. However, the heat was unrelenting; nearly to the point of being unbearable. Movement had to be kept to a minimum. And there was a serious power problem; the electricity was turned off each day from 11am to 2pm.

On the one day, I roused myself at sunrise to take a boat along the Ganges to explore the different ghats. As mentioned, the ghat where I was based -- Harishchandra Ghat -- is one of the places people are traditionally cremated. This meant there was a permanent bonfire outside my hotel window where human flesh slowly charred. The banks of the river are lined with the most magnificent buildings, their crumbling and peeling facades towering over the water, reminiscing of a former glory. Each ghat is very different; some are large and imposing, stepping haughtily down to the water edge; others are more shy, timidly sneaking to the river. But all of them are crawling with people: hawkers selling everything; thousands of bathers offering puja; men busily working their trade, for instance pounding stones on white sheets and jeans. Spirits or laundry: all is cleansed by the mother Ganges.

But frankly, as far as I could tell, anyone setting foot in that river is taking their life into their hands. According to the Lonely Planet, the Ganges is so heavily polluted at Varanasi that the water is septic: no dissolved oxygen exists. Where people bathe, 30 sewers are continuously discharging into the river. Apparently, the water has 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria per 100ml of water. In water that is safe for bathing, this figure should be less than 500. Nice. And according to my boat man, that same water is then cleaned to refeed Varanasi by huge water towers specked along the river.

What goes around certainly may come around, so to speak.

From Varanasi, it was a very brief stop in Mumbai. I flew from Varanasi via Delhi; and I arrived around 9pm at the airport. And my flight out was at 4am. There seemed little point to struggle with traffic and find a hotel room. Instead wasn't it eminently more sensible to find a quiet spot on the floor there? I have slept overnights at airports on a number of occasions: for instance crashing out on the concrete at Ben Gurion (and that was outside); or taking shelter behind a vending machine in Athens. But none of them was more uncomfortable than roughing it at Bombay. It was so damned cold. The air seemed to be pumping directly onto my face, while the chill of the floor tiles seeped into the depth of my bones. Even with my jumper, fleece, sarong and towel (yes, I must have looked a right sight), I was freezing.

It went a long way to fanning my loathing of aircon.

So I was mightily relieved to step on the plane to wing my way to Goa. Which was very very very wet.