Varanasi Part 1 (2-21)

Friday was spent on the train from Agra to Varanasi. Our nine hour trip took thirteen hours. So it was a long day. We were in a second class sleeper with four beds, two on each side, and a curtain. Shortly after leaving the station, sheets, a blanket, and a pillow were delivered. It was comfortable enough. The rooms with four beds were on one side of the car and one bunk with two beds parallel to the aisle was on the other. Having a room was much nicer. After a few hours, one of the men got off and a young man joined us. He is quite nice, and I chatted with him a couple times. He’s finishing medical school to be a dentist but thinks he wants to be a professor. He comes from a family of professors, as both his father and sister are professors. Bengali and Hindi are his first languages. He learned English at English-medium primary and secondary schools. At the university, he and his friends speak English much of the time. I learned that public universities are government supported, but students have to pay about INR 1000/$160 a month, which is difficult for many families. Private school students pay about INR 8000 a month. Talking with him, I learned that our train was running two hours late. When it was time to arrive, a man told me that it would be another hour. After that, the train stopped a lot, and another hour was added. We finally arrived after midnight, and got to the hotel at 1:00.

Since we arrived so late, we had a late start on Saturday. Varanasi, which is also known as Banaras,  is the oldest living city in the world, being about 3000 years old. For Hindus it is considered to be a sacred city, like Mecca is for Muslims. It is the holiest of Hindu cities and is also holy for Jainism and is important to Buddhism. It is considered to be the spiritual capital of India. Accordingly, we visited many sites related to the three religions.

The day was spent seeing some of the sights in Varanasi. We started with Sarnath, which is called the Buddhist Circuit on the signs. Before looking into this tour, I hadn’t realized that the Buddha was in Varanasi, but this is where he preached his first sermon. The Dhamekh Stupa is believed to be the location of his first sermon. The nearby museum contains the relics from the archaeological site near the stupa.

The 5^th century Chaukhandi Stupa marks the place where the Buddha met his first disciples after his enlightenment.

Wat Thai Sarnath was built by Thais to memorialize the Buddha statue in Afghanistan that was destroyed by the Taliban. 

People circumambulate around it. Several Thai monks and nuns were camping under trees on the grounds.

Vadra Vidya Institute is for the study of Tibetan Buddhism and includes a temple where many people make offerings and pray. 

People can sit at small tables to pray and study. Outside the temple there are statues of Hindu gods.

Mula Gandha Kuthi Vihara, also called Sarnath Deer Park, commemorates the site where the Buddha gave his first sermon. 

The temple is known for its beautiful paintings by a famous Japanese artist. These are currently being restored and repainted by a Japanese painter. I was interested to see the child Buddha that was common in Vietnam. 

The grounds also have a sculpture of the Buddha and his first five disciples.

We also visited a Jain temple for the sect that is nudist. There were a couple pictures of nude men on the wall. 

No photos were allowed inside, which I learned just after taking one as there were no signs. I really liked the art work on the walls. To enter the temple, I had to wash my hands and mouth in addition to removing shoes and socks.

We also visited two Hindu temples. Durga Temple, also known as the Monkey Temple because there used to be monkeys there, was special in that it is dark red. Red is the color for power. People used to sacrifice animals there, but now they break a coconut.

The other temple is the New Vishnawath Temple, a replica of the original temple, on the campus of Baranas Hindu University. 

It has crocodiles as decorations under the eaves. The crocodile is an important symbol because the goddess Ganga sits on a crocodile. A special place in the temple has water from the Ganga dripping from a pot onto a sculpture and then onto plants and into a pool with a stream where people wash with the sacred water. 










In one courtyard there is a statue of a sacred cow. People whisper their wishes in its ear.

The Mother India Temple isn’t a religious temple. Rather it’s a building that honors the country. It contains a marble relief map of India. It was really interesting to see where we are in the topography.

We drove through a village where we got out and walked for a short time. 

There were many piles of buffalo dung drying. 

The guide chatted with a couple twelve-year-old boys and took my photo with them. He also took a photo for himself on his phone, which I found interesting.

We also stopped at a wholesale market where fruits and some vegetables are sold in large quantities. Buyers take them to a market to sell, and some are taken to other areas. 

Since this was pretty much an area full of men who stared at us, not being used to foreigners I imagine, I was glad to be walking with our guide, as the staring can be uncomfortable. 

It was also a good place to see and photograph the decorative Indian trucks, as they weren’t moving. 

There was also a barbershop.

We saw many wedding preparations—canopies, horse carts, cars. This is one of two wedding seasons because according to the Hindu calendar, February and August are auspicious times to get married. (Someone else said February to August, but this guide has better English.) Weddings begin at about 8:00 PM and go on all night. The groom and his family arrive by special horse carts. The couple leaves in a car decorated with flowers. Some grooms prefer to arrive by car, too. There were weddings at our hotel both nights, and we could hear a lot of drumming.

Varanasi is famous for three things: mangoes, silk, and betel. We stopped at a silk workshop where silk is woven. A couple old men use the old method, weaving by hand. 

Most use machines with cards that organize the silk into the patterns. 

Many vegetables are grown in the area, but fruits come from other places. We saw yellow mustard flowers that will become mustard seed.

I enjoyed driving through the streets. 

We went through the downtown area where the streets are paved and wider and there are name-brand stores and new malls. Our guide informed us that most of the old theaters have been or are being turned into malls. We also went through areas with narrow streets and stalls on the sides. 

At one point our guide told us that we were lucky: an elephant was walking down the street. He also took a photo. He said elephants are used mostly for special ceremonies, such as weddings.

Then we returned to the hotel for two hours before our evening activity. This was our first experience on the River Ganga. Varanasi is famous for its seven kilometers of ghats. These are steps leading to the river and platforms where ceremonies take place. We went to one of the sites where cremations are done. There were several bodies in various stages of the process. The body is wrapped and dipped into the river. Then it is placed on a pile of wood—30-50 kilos—with some wood on top of the body. Straw is used to start a fire beneath the pile, and then it burns for about three hours. Only men attend the cremation, sitting on the side. The main mourner wears white. About 600 bodies are cremated every day at this site and another one. The grounds are in operation 24 hours a day. There is also a crematorium where bodies in caskets can be burned, but most people prefer the open burning along the river. Ashes are put into the river in two places. It was fascinating to observe this practice.

Next we took a boat to join the other tourists'--both foreign and Indian--boats to watch the evening ceremony for worshipping the Ganga. 










Thousands of people sit on the river bank as well. We saw two locations for the ceremony, one with five priests and one with seven. The five priests began first, and we could see them from the distance while waiting for the one in front of us to begin, which was nice. 

In front of us at the bottom of the river bank there were people who needed something special from the river. They prayed, and some washed their hands and faces with river water. 

Then the seven priests arrived, standing on platforms in a line with each one under a lighted umbrella. 

They had incense in a container and held it up to all four directions. 

Then they were given a pyramid of fire that they raised several times in all four directions. This was repeated with an urn of fire. At that time we left to avoid the huge crowd exiting later. The guide told me that after honoring the Ganga with fire, the priests followed the same procedure with a fan and then with a feather. The first two parts of the ceremony—incense and fire—took about half an hour. Since I’d watched the rest of the ceremony at the other site, I felt like I’d seen enough and it was OK to leave.

It was good that we left before the ceremony ended and the whole crowd left. It was hard enough walking through the crowd to meet the car and driver, as we weren’t the only ones making our way out and the area was packed with people leaving.

Random information:

Flags are flown to indicate the religion: red flags for Hindu and green for Muslim.

Buffalo milk is used for drinking. It is creamier than cow milk.

Our guide is Hindu. He explained that he respects all religions and likes to meditate. When we were in the Tibetan Buddhist temple, he prayed while we walked around.

All of our guides have had arranged marriages. This guide’s son is 28 years old and unmarried. Since it is the parents’ responsibility to find a wife or husband, he will concentrate on that after the busy tourist season is over. He said that typically parents find a potential match and then the couple can meet for about fifteen minutes. Either one can disagree with the proposed arrangement.