Smoke on the Water

A slight backtrack here to 2016 when I spent five weeks in India and Nepal with my perfect travel buddy - my wife. I'll not flood the site with the daily updates but a chosen few highlights hopefully will show what as wonderful place India really is. Varanassi is a place out of this World - Literally for some.

This is back to the India I know better, local working towns and market , noise, organised chaos and people everywhere but busy - It's great viewing and even in static traffic people seem too occupied to really to worry about us compared to Punjab. We get turfed out of the cab 'near' our Hotel and after the usual chancers offering us over hotels we find the place (always have a printout handy of where we are staying), down a side alley doesn't look a good start but this 11 room place has got decent reviews and recent awards.

The Hotel is excellent, family run and will do nicely for the next 40 hrs, we sort out a rough plan starting in less than 25 mins time to see the Cremation Ceremonies and still on the River the Evening festive- that will be enough for now. We've got a great local guide who manoeuvres us through the alleyways down the the Ganges and the first thing that I notice or not is it doesn't smell - there goes another myth or perhaps we hit a good day, the second thing is it looks like i thought it would with people washing and drinking the water- I'll pass on both of those as well.

Our guide/boatman takes us about 15 min up river to within a respectable distant of what is a pretty unique picture , hard to describe really especially from a person with limited understanding but it's basically an immense open air crematorium , with ten pyres burning 24 hrs and 100 bodies a day. It seems very organised and an almost convey belt system working as one ceremony concludes the next body is waiting having been washed in the river. We given a good background into the belief and reasons for wanting this sort of exit and the religious history which for someone like me is enlightening although rather odd. I won't even attempt to articulate much more here as far easier to talk about when we get home!, We decline the on-shore option offered really out of respect although assured it wasn't a problem!

We continue towards the customary funeral Ghat, three large barges of wood moored up alongside three departees, it's quieter but still a lot going on, this place never shuts and the flame that lights each pyre has been alight for 3000 years. Even when flooded the ceremonies continued on the rooftops!. We see groups of people and individual's washing/praying/swimming and drinking from the scared river - It's fascinating viewing and whilst I worked right on the River opposite the O2 for 20 years I can't compete aside from Phil from Eastenders driving his Sierra into the Thames and James Bond chasing after the customary evil Villainess in honour of Queen and Country.

I meet one of the exiled Aghori monks of Varanasi - Feared across India, they feed on human flesh and reside near cremation sites in search of spiritual enlightenment.

Only a small number of these remain only about 50 left , perhaps not the best diet!

And declining his handshake in fear of him having a pre-dinner snack it's time to leave this crazy town and move onto the next one , what next, we've already been in one earthquake, one cyclone and one Hotel lockdown.