Country #82: Myth-busting Incredible India: Varanasi

I am an excellent procrastinator. I am so good at it that there are moments when, after noticing that an entire day has passed and nothing has gotten done, I feel an almost bizarre kind of pride in the extent of my skills. I believe it is this same well-honed tendency of mine that I have to blame for not having visited India earlier.

For reasons that are still not clear to me, every time the subject of India, and more specifically of traveling therein, arises, there is someone in the room wanting to talk about how dirty/ crowded/ difficult/ smelly it is. Sure, there is usually someone crowing about how special and beautiful it is, but they are quickly shouted down by someone whose friend's cousin's neighbor went and got so sick that they developed a rash and eventually sprouted a tail. It is enough to wear you out. The flight has not been purchased or the hotels booked and already you are exhausted. Based on little more than this hearsay, I always thought of India as somewhere I would like to go someday, but not right now...better to put it off until sometime in the vague and indefinite future. You know, to procrastinate.


It took my friend, Laura and I wanting to travel together to bring the idea of India to the forefront. It was one place neither of us had been but both wanted to see. Airfare aside, it is surprisingly inexpensive. And then there was the reaction from friends, mainly of the "two girls in India...preposterous!" variety, that warmed my rebellious feminist nature closer to the idea. Of course, we could do this. And, of course, we did. We initially were going to go as part of a tour group, but random luck intervened and the tour was cancelled just as we were far enough into our research to realize that this was something that we could do ourselves. Of course, it helped that Laura is an excellent travel planner.

If I could use this blog to offer one bit of advice it is this: if an adventurous travel agent wants to go somewhere, jump on that chance, no questions asked. Over the course of a month, we collaborated on creating the perfect itinerary, booking internal flights, trains, buses and accommodations. Once everything was in place, there was only one thing to do, which was to worry about all the terrible things everyone kept telling us. It is because of the anxiety that this widely-disseminated propaganda causes that I would like to introduce a new feature for the India posts that will follow over the next couple of weeks. I will call it "Berti's myth-busters".

Berti's Myth-buster #1: I will start with the big one. It is difficult, logistically, to travel in India because nothing runs properly, no one speaks English, everyone will try to rip you off, chickens run rampant on the trains, etc. and et. al. My completely anecdotal conclusion: Not just untrue, I call total utter bullshit on this one. India has 18 official languages, English being one of them. Unless your travels revolve solely around remote villages with limited access to education, there will always be an English speaker nearby and Indian people, as a whole, are incredibly kind and hospitable. If someone sees you struggling to communicate and they can help, they will not hesitate to step in and do so.

The train system, particularly the booking process, can be somewhat confusing at first (there are confirmed, semi-confirmed, and stand-by seats available at any given time, add to that tourist quotas, women quotas, emergency tickets and it all becomes a bit of labyrinth) but once you get the hang of it, it is one of the most organized systems I have ever seen. Anyone interested in pre-booking train tickets (which I highly recommend doing) can go to www.erail.in, see what is available and then go to the official site to book the tickets. That's it. Your print-out is your ticket.

Each train car will have a list by the door with the names of all the passengers and their seat numbers, so it takes a supreme act of stupidity to end up on the wrong train. The trains,based on my limited experience, tend to run on time (the biggest delay we encountered was 30 minutes). The first class seats include a meal service far nicer than anything you are going to see on a US air carrier and the night train sleepers come with sheets, pillows, and blankets. The buses we took varied somewhat in comfort and cleanliness, but the key appeared to be to reserve a seat (every hotel will do this for you).

The buses are no better or worse than those I have encountered all over the world and don't really merit any special concern (and no, we did not have to ride on the roof, it is no longer even legal to do so, although, you can still see it in the smaller villages). Finally, if you want to be a diva about it, you can always hire a private car to take you from one city to the next, for approx. $15-$20 per hour (less if you find a car that needs to go to your destination anyways).

As far as touts trying to rip you off, that does exist, but with a small amount of preparation and common sense, it should never be a problem. The most common scam involves trying to lure travellers to a mediocre hotel where the tout receives commission. They will tell people that the hotel you had booked is closed or in a bad neighborhood (or so I read, I never experienced this personally). The easy solution to this is to arrange for the hotel to pick you up at the bus, train or airport.

They don't want you to get suckered into another property any more than you do, so often the pick-up is free or very cheap. The hotels will then help out with any travel arrangements you may need to get to the next city, often proving more far more helpful than concierges at some 5 star hotels that I have experienced (Bucharest's Howard Johnson, I'm looking at you).

So, to put to bed myth #1, India is no more difficult and in many instances much easier to travel through than most places on this planet. The travel infrastructure is solidly in place and help is never far away.

We did not know this going in, so our idea was to go to the most intimidating, most daunting, most foreign (to us) city first so as to make the rest of the journey seem easy by comparison. We began with Varanasi. For Hindus, this is considered one of the holiest of holy cities. Bathing in the River Ganga is believed to cleanse a person of their sins. If one is to die here, their soul will be released and the cycle of birth, death, reincarnation will come to an end, which led many a Maharaja from all over India to build spectacular ghats that they could retire to once they felt the end was near.

Even if one dies elsewhere, it is considered auspicious to be cremated by the Ganga and bodies can be seen carried through the town on the way to the burning ghats. These operate on the river bank, cremating bodies atop large funeral pyres, out in the open for all to see. Sometimes, if the family is not able to purchase enough firewood, the corpse is only partially cremated, thus, I had heard of disembodied limbs floating by, while people bathed or did laundry at a neighboring ghat. As far as shock value goes, it doesn't get much better than a city full of people waiting to die co-mingling with the partial floating remains of those who have.

Add to this an oft-repeated quote by Mark Twain "Benares (the former name of Varanasi) is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together." And guess what, Marky Mark, it is 3000+ years old and only getting older. The city is congested, loud, hectic and overwhelming. It is an aggressive assault to the senses that refuses to let up. Yet, I found it not to be nearly as "scary" as anticipated. It made me wonder if perhaps it was me that's so jaded from a lifetime of travel that I can not be easily shocked. And it is certainly possible that was a factor, although I sincerely hope that's not the case, but I think there is more to it than that.

Upon our arrival, our hotel arranged a nighttime boat trip on the river. After a short walk along the waterfront, we climbed into a small row boat for a trip to the Dashashwamedh Ghat where there is an aarti, or prayer, ritual that takes place every evening with singing, chanting and fire dances. The river is crowded with fellow tourists, many on pilgrimages, watching the ceremony. There are votive candles nestled in holders made of tree leaves floating all along the water. It is a serene and touching sight and best of all, none of the bobbing carnage that I had feared was visible under the moon-lit night.

The following day, we woke up early for a sunrise boat trip along the same route. By the time we got to the river, around 6 am, there were already plenty of people exercising, bathing, praying, washing clothes and yes, watching cremations taking place (only the men, women are not permitted to come to their loved ones' cremations). It is obviously something that we, as Westerners, don't usually see but their matter-of-factness (for lack of a better word), the way that this was clearly a normal everyday thing, zapped the whole thing of most of its shock value, at least for me. Granted, we were on a boat and did not get too close to the cremations, and the only things we saw floating in the water, far away from the bathers, were the bloated remains of two cows, being picked over by birds, but the feeling of abject horror that I had dreaded never came.

The following morning, I returned by myself, perhaps subconsciously wanting to be shocked, for a closer look at the burning ghat. I watched as a pile of burning logs revealed an arm stiffly rising above the flames. Still no horror, but I did have my first of many 'wow, I'm in really in India' moments. It is hard to explain without sounding Velveeta cheesy, but the proceedings had a quiet, dignified beauty that far exceeded any "ick" factor. The mourners' calm acceptance of their loss seemed so 'evolved' and beyond the realm of the possible in my small world view. To be permitted to watch something so intimate and personal outweighed any inherent hassles (traffic, noise, pollution) to such an extent that it is hard to think back to a time when I was unsure about going to India.

I don't know if it was over-hyping, my jadedness or just the magic of India that removed the real Varanasi from the realm of the "scary" one I had envisioned, but if it was going to be the most difficult place on our itinerary, it boded extremely well for the rest of our trip.

At night, when hundreds of these are floated as offerings to the River Ganga, it is a supremely beautiful sight to behold.



A nightly aarti or prayer ceremony taking place at Dashashwamedh Ghat.


Sunrise on the Ganga.


Manikarnika Ghat, the main site for cremations, operates 24 hours a day. Photography is not permitted up close.



Families come to down to the river each morning to bathe and pray.


There is some debate as whether these Sadhus, or holy men who have renounced all social position, caste and money, are legitimate or fakes who dress up for the sake of tourists.


Kedar Ghat, this ghat and its temple are popular with Bengalis and South Indians.


A sacred cow at Vishwanath Temple on the campus of Benares University.


A man gathering cow patties to be used to built fires.





Auto-rickshaws are the preferred mode of transportation throughout much of India. In a related note, just try and take a photo in downtown Varanasi without getting an electrical wire in the shot, I dare you.