Black Rock City, Nevada / Varanasi, India ~ Burning Man with a spiritual twist...oh the things you will see...
walking the ghats and a dog runs by with a piece of burned wood in his mouth-suddenly behind us a dog rumble starts over the wood and it is at that point that I realize that we are near the burning ghat and that piece of burned wood is really a piece of burned person that the dog has grabbed from one of the burning pyres on the ghat.....
sadhu with a badly deformed face - looks like a caul that hangs down from his forehead to mid chest with only a right eye showing and under the caul swollen sausage like pieces hanging down to mid chest making it look like he has an elephant trunk hanging down. All of this combined with the usual sadhu/baba(holy man)(clothes or lack of them, dreadlocks, and all exposed skin covered in grey ash. This particular sadhu has a prime sitting spot on the ghats with a nicely painted background of Hindu idols with Ganesh (the elephant god and bringer of good luck) prominent in the foreground. Along with several other sadhus, they all sit here all day playing music, praying, burning incense, smoking chillum, and receiving money from the crowds that gather around much of the day watching, taking pictures, and wondering if this fellow really is Ganesh reincarnated.
burning ghats - a much abbreviated version of what they are all about.
Hindu religion believes in rebirth or reincarnation. Depending on how many karma points you have accumulated in your lifetime, you will come back as either a higher caste person with an easier life, or as an animal. As life is suffering, the goal is to achieve freedom or moksha from this cycle of rebirth. One way of doing this is to be burned on the ghats of the Mother Ganga (Ganges River) in Varanasi which is but one of several holy cities in India. Varanasi by the way is supposed to be one of the oldest, continuously inhabited cities in the world..over 5000 years old...
So everyone wants to die in Varanasi and be burned on the ghats (steps down to the Ganges River) and then to have your ashes thrown into the river as by doing this they will achieve this ultimate freedom from the cycle of rebirth.
The process.... There are two burning ghats in Varanasi, a main one and a smaller one. Each are lined with stacks of wood of various types, with sandalwood being the most expensive. Each piece of wood is weighed and worth a certain amount. You must buy enough wood to make the funeral pyre to burn the body. The body must be burned within a short time of death (7days?) so many people come to Varanasi to die..
The dead body is carried through the small alleys leading to the river on a bamboo stretcher and is wrapped in shiney metallic fabric. It is set on the ghat awaiting its turn to burn. The funeral pyre is laid and when it is time, the body is dipped in the Ganges river and then laid on the wood and covered with wood on top. Someone from the family (the oldest son?) has his head shaved and wearing only a white length of material wrapped around his body walks around the body several times and lights the fire with a bundle of burning straw.
The fire starts and the body burns and everyone watches.
It takes about 2-3 hours for a body to completely burn.
There is no smell.
There are about 8-10 bodies burning at one time on the main ghat and the bodies burn 24 hours a day 365 days a year..
5 groups of people do not need to be burned-pregnant women, children, holy men, people with leporosy, and people bitten by a cobra; as they can achieve moksha by having their bodies are just dumped straight into the river without being burned.
walking the ghats and a dog runs by with a piece of burned wood in his mouth-suddenly behind us a dog rumble starts over the wood and it is at that point that I realize that we are near the burning ghat and that piece of burned wood is really a piece of burned person that the dog has grabbed from one of the burning pyres on the ghat.....
sadhu with a badly deformed face - looks like a caul that hangs down from his forehead to mid chest with only a right eye showing and under the caul swollen sausage like pieces hanging down to mid chest making it look like he has an elephant trunk hanging down. All of this combined with the usual sadhu/baba(holy man)(clothes or lack of them, dreadlocks, and all exposed skin covered in grey ash. This particular sadhu has a prime sitting spot on the ghats with a nicely painted background of Hindu idols with Ganesh (the elephant god and bringer of good luck) prominent in the foreground. Along with several other sadhus, they all sit here all day playing music, praying, burning incense, smoking chillum, and receiving money from the crowds that gather around much of the day watching, taking pictures, and wondering if this fellow really is Ganesh reincarnated.
burning ghats - a much abbreviated version of what they are all about.
Hindu religion believes in rebirth or reincarnation. Depending on how many karma points you have accumulated in your lifetime, you will come back as either a higher caste person with an easier life, or as an animal. As life is suffering, the goal is to achieve freedom or moksha from this cycle of rebirth. One way of doing this is to be burned on the ghats of the Mother Ganga (Ganges River) in Varanasi which is but one of several holy cities in India. Varanasi by the way is supposed to be one of the oldest, continuously inhabited cities in the world..over 5000 years old...
So everyone wants to die in Varanasi and be burned on the ghats (steps down to the Ganges River) and then to have your ashes thrown into the river as by doing this they will achieve this ultimate freedom from the cycle of rebirth.
The process.... There are two burning ghats in Varanasi, a main one and a smaller one. Each are lined with stacks of wood of various types, with sandalwood being the most expensive. Each piece of wood is weighed and worth a certain amount. You must buy enough wood to make the funeral pyre to burn the body. The body must be burned within a short time of death (7days?) so many people come to Varanasi to die..
The dead body is carried through the small alleys leading to the river on a bamboo stretcher and is wrapped in shiney metallic fabric. It is set on the ghat awaiting its turn to burn. The funeral pyre is laid and when it is time, the body is dipped in the Ganges river and then laid on the wood and covered with wood on top. Someone from the family (the oldest son?) has his head shaved and wearing only a white length of material wrapped around his body walks around the body several times and lights the fire with a bundle of burning straw.
The fire starts and the body burns and everyone watches.
It takes about 2-3 hours for a body to completely burn.
There is no smell.
There are about 8-10 bodies burning at one time on the main ghat and the bodies burn 24 hours a day 365 days a year..
5 groups of people do not need to be burned-pregnant women, children, holy men, people with leporosy, and people bitten by a cobra; as they can achieve moksha by having their bodies are just dumped straight into the river without being burned.
So we are pretty excited to get back to Varanasi as we have fond memories of our short visit here back in 2003. I think it is safe to say that we were mesmerized by India in 2003 with a a short visit and hectic train ride that seemed exciting. Today the long bus and train rides are history with hundreds of hours on our butts and definitely not as exciting...same goes for the holy city itself. It is still an amazing place of extremes but it is famous world wide and the result is a lot of tourists and along with that an increase in commercialism. However some things appear to never change in Varanasi...the Ganges still has 1.5 million ppm fecal coloform (500 is considered max for safe swimming) despite a "14 year plan in its tenth year to clean it up!"...the floating bridge upstream of Varanasi is still floating with only one bridge abutment completed...the 10 rupee massage (?) is still going strong (it took us about 3 minutes to realize one does not shake hands on the ghats!) If you do they start massaging your fingers and start on the 10 rupee massage talk...the problem is the 10 rupee charge covers your one fingernail only!!...cows still own the ghats and the narrow labyrinth of galis in which the absent minded shopper can be lost for hours in...although the water buffalo have taken over certain ghats!...the burning ghat is still going 24/7 360 days a year. (the scam to separate tourists from their money to support the poor elderly that couldn't afford the cost of burning wood no longer exists...or at least we weren't hit up for it this time). What really surprised us is that the Japanese love this place for long term holidays and we have a hard time understanding this as Varanasi is about as close to the exact opposite of the well organized, clean Japan as one can get...but that probably is its drawing point! No doubt about it Varanasi offers the best deals on handicrafts in all of India! The Ganges River is way down (we actually ended up crossing the main Ganges on our trip to Darjeeling and it is huge...at least 3 km across compared to the branch of the Ganges at Varanasi which during our visit was only about 250 m across! So we did a ton of walking and know every Ghat from north to south and did a good long hike into Ramnagar Fort...a awesome structure right on the banks of the Ganges...however the outside of the fort has huge painted advertisements all over one side of it???? Yup a 500 year old masterpiece of architecture looks really good with bright blue and red signs advertising Vodaphone and India Oil painted on the side of it. Something like this in Canada would have been repaired and we would charge huge bucks for a visit...but India has literally hundreds upon hundreds of these ancient very cool forts etc. which is one reason why it is so popular with tourists...and no doubt about it Tourism is huge in India despite the rubbish and crap!!! We still loved our stay...the Ganpati guest house was great..food is fantastic...shopping great...weather good (not to hot but unfortunately foggy) and we didn't step in to many piles of shit..and that is GOOD!
