A PILGRIMAGE TO INDIA
Varanasi
VARANASI
Varanasi (Benares) is chaotic. Its labyrinth of narrow lanes and alleys are stuffed full with cows, goats, bikes, carts, people and gold clad corpses being carried on stretchers past fly covered food counters. Apart from the occasional belching moped that forced its way through the jammed passageways the scene we walked through to our lodgings at Sinhia Ghat had not changed for thousands of years. Mark Twain described it perfectly when he said: “"Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together.”
As my sandals hit another patch of lung-numbing effluent I observed that if I fancied getting really, really sick then this place had everything you could hope for. The last time Steve and Debbie had stayed in Varanasi they were flat out in bed for two weeks.
But of course once you see beyond the litter, dangerously built buildings, wall to wall cow pats and grime, Varanasi reveals another extraordinary world. This is the world of Benares, the holy city that is to the Hindus what Jerusalem is to Christians. Varanasi is the city of Lord Shiva, the capital of spiritual knowledge, the city of light.
 The beauty of Varanasi revealed itself at dawn as we practiced our yoga on the flat roof of the guest house. The early morning light revealed the opposite bank of the Ganges illuminating in soft tones of purple and orange the flood planes and distant outline of trees. Closer to us we could see, as we stretched into our postures, sunken temples in the mud and the last whiff of wood fuelled cremations. To our left the cows were being milked while all around ash faced sadhus and beggars emerged from their slumbers.
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As we moved into the somewhat vulnerable full reclining hero pose, a group of monkeys scrambled towards us over the roof tops and washing lines. Three big ones jumped up onto the veranda railings and looked down at me laid flat on the floor with my ankles by my waist and my crouch pointing at them in the come-and-hurt-me position. Fortunately they scrutinized us for a while, decided we had no food, looked at us with perplexed distain and eventually left us alone.
 By day you can sit by the waterside on the ghats and India will come to you. It unfolds in a surreal pageant of orange clad holy men, children selling postcards and chai, women carrying enormous loads on their head. I watched a man push bike laden with fifteen Calor gas bottles, street masseurs and hairdressers touting for business, others were sleeping on the floor, urinating on the pavement or bathing in the soup of the Ganges. But it is at night that this place is most fascinating for transforms into and an unfamiliar and eerie world soaked in death.
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NEXT: Ananda Mayee Ma
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