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Varanasi, India

Beep beep beeeeep beep beeeeeep beep beep! If I hear another beeeeeep in my lifetime ……. oh listen to that – another beeep…aaaaarrrggghhh. 13hr bumpy car ride from Nepal to our destination Varanasi in India with on average 21 seconds maximum gap between beeeeeeeep. With the dirt roads, sky high in mounds and deep craters I can understand why tractors with trailers are the locals transportation….we are in India driving overland. I get the feeling that this is going to be a country I’m going to find overland travel hard, but I think it will teach me a lot!

Skipping forward, If only words could describe this experience of pure tranquility. As I write this, four of us lay in what they call a sailing boat, and literally float our way down the river Ganges. It’s incredibly peaceful and not at all what I was expecting. It far exceeds that. The wind is the only sound to be heard in the craziest and loudest country I have ever been to. 1.5hrs away from Varanasi, our driver dropped us off on the side of the Ganges.
Three sailing boats are waiting for us – I’d call them dingys with roofs. Only 5 metres in length and 1.8 in width, they are each lined with pillows and a thin mattress, ready for us to do nothing but relax and take it all in. The middle section is ours, and a driver with oars sits at each end. Bamboo holds the plastic tarp making the roof. It’s so still it feels as though we aren’t moving, yet we move quite fast. The only way to tell how fast we move is by looking at the land and cows on the water’s edge.
An hour in, all 3 boats pull up to the foreshore where a 4th boat /dingy awaits. That’s the cooking boat and a decadent Indian lunch awaits our arrival. Obviously there are no toilets on the boat or on the foreshore, so pulling up a tree is really our only option for the next day and a half. At the lunch stop however, the only trees and ground coverage is gorse bush.. Yes and ouch. If you aren’t concerned with 1st world comforts, then you can really enjoy all things Intrepid travel. And I can tell you, money can’t buy an open mind for today’s experiences.
At 4pm, we have a chai tea break. The chai though, is the same colour as the river and I hope that it isn’t made with Indians (it’s the same river that the public cremations happen on). I plan on finding a tree (preferably not a gorse bush) but kids in a local village, consisting of about 15 children, come running to the edge to see us white folk. Our guide must have said something to them in Hindi, like she’ll eat you or ruuuunnnn. So they run when they see me. I obviously run after them and that just startsa game of catch in the mud. More children’s giggles, but no toilet break.
After nearly 6 hrs of floating every which way, we arrive at an island plonked in the middle of the the river. It’s only about .5m higher than the waterline, and scattered with cows and the odd horse. A storm narrows in on us. Thunder has been rolling above for the last few hours. If a full blown storm comes we are sleeping in the boat. While it’s raining, it’s iPad tunes in the boat over a fancy 3 course boat meal. The Ganges is a holy river (as is Varanasi town), so only vegetarian food and no alcohol. It’s by far the best Indian food we’ve ever had. Finally the rain settles, a fire on the sand is started to cook chapattis. Our drivers pitches our tents and we settle in for the hottest night of our lives.
Breakfast and chai is served before another 5 hour float, the sun is shining and the water is still.
40km later we arrive back to the mainland, but not before one more boat lunch. A 10 hr float down stream takes them 2-3 days of rowing up stream.
I have to say, although we throughly enjoyed it, that morning sun and humidity nearly killed us. 99% of the river we went on wasn’t populated at all, but coming into Varanasi was a different story. The River Ganges showed me the circle of life: people washing, cremations, swimming, cows floating, people toileting next to people washing their clothes and drinking the dirtiest water I have ever seen. If we were to get Delhi belly it would have been on our camping and boat trip on the the holy Ganges. But we feel great and are looking forward to an extraordinarily long shower, washing teeth and aircon. This was an experience of a life time.

Normally in monsoon season this part of the 15 day trip is cancelled. In fact as of 48 hrs ago the flooded river and covered island meant it was cancelled. Fortunately, the sun and a miracle pulled through because it was such an amazing 24 hours.

Back into the city life of Varanasi.Rickshaw rides and exploring by foot is definitely the way to go to immerse yourself into this crazy city. 60% are Hindu dressed in traditional dress with paint marking their body and face. A further 30% are Moslem with most in full burka and males in their white attire, with only a handful being Buddhists believe it or not. Cows, goats and dogs scatter the road, while rickshaws weave around the rubbish mounds, animals and people. The smell is out of this world, not to mention the rubbish literally piled high in the Old City. It’s so bad you cringe when walking through to one of the Ghats. A Ghat is a sacred place on the river for Hindu pilgrims to go to bathe and perform rituals and ceremonies, as they have done for hundreds of years.
We leave the streets and get taken to a high quality 40 year old silk and cashmere shop. Tens of thousands of products with varying levels of quality and price are thrown at us. It’s all so beautiful but our budget only allows for a few pieces of the famous Indian silk.
It seems as though this day doesn’t end. Dave’s only had two hours sleep from the camping expedition, so we paste our smiles on and head back down to the Ganges for their daily traditional candle flower ceremony. Hundreds of people line the steps, mantras are sung, a priest is there doing his thing with fire while all pray with him. Fortunately we are able to escape the chaotic river’s edge and enjoy it from a little boat. We set off candles in flax leaves down the river.

To end our visit to Varanasi, the holy city, Dave completed his goal of having a ‘Cut throat razor in India’. It wasn’t hard finding the perfect looking dodgy road side barber – they are everywhere. In a little shed down by the river was a man with two chairs in a tin shed. The in depth hour long episode went like this: first was the lathering up of the face, followed by the cut throat razor to Dave’s neck and face (the barber said ‘your hair is very strong’), then trimming the sides all around the hairline, alum ( a rock) is used as antiseptic and aftershave, pink cream with face massage, followed by yellow cream with face massage, haircut and head massage, talcum powder sponged around the shaved spots. Dave said he was thankful they didn’t find his back hair otherwise they wouldn’t have stopped at his head. All this was less than $1, but when he gave him $10 (5 days wages) he nearly fell over backwards. We were thankful he did not contract Hepatitis as part of their package. The lovely man talking to me while this was happening suggested I needed to see a beauty parlour at some point so my husband will think I’m pretty. Ain’t that the truth! We showed someone our wedding pics and they didn’t recognise us. Even the passport control in India questioned both of our authenticity. Anyway, the experience was definitely worth having. It’s the hottest country we have ever been in, literally dripping wet all day, every day at every moment. Five more days left in India and I reckon that’s at least 40 cold showers. Power and aircon in this state doesn’t go most of the day, due to power shortages.

Biggest disappointment of the trip to date – all of today’s photos have been wiped from the SD card, including all of the cut throat razor pictures.

Varanasi was seriously a hard place to be, it woke all of our senses like no where so far. Hard doesn’t mean bad, far from it. This will be with me for life. I fell in love wth the people and the culture.

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