The holy city of Varanasi

We arrived in very hot Varanasi late afternoon and were met by hard working and very friendly Indian touts outside the airport. We negotiated (with about 10 people) a taxi into town, which only actually took us half way into the city as he informed us it was too busy to go all the way to our hotel. We then took a rickshaw who also failed to take us to the hotel (apparently it was too busy) so we ended up walking the last bit in the burning heat ! We finally found our hotel and very nice it was in a prime position on the ghats overlooking the holy Ganges.
Life on the ghats is very, very interesting. It's the kind of place you can sit and people watch all day. People are washing in the river, drinking the filthy water (there are dead pigs and monkeys and God knows what else in it), getting a shave, playing cricket, leading their water buffalo, and just about everything else.

Gambling by the ghats

We took all this in on the first full day, and took a sunset cruise down the river on the first night. We passed the various ghats including the Manikarnika Ghat where hundreds of cremations take place every day. At the end of the cruise we watched the nightly ceremony of light at the Dasasvanedha Ghat, performed by young Brahmans and pretty impressive.
The following morning we went on a sunrise cruise and performed our own puja, placing lighted candles and flowers onto the holy river.

Pooja

Later that day we took the slowest rickshaw in India (maybe the world) north to Sarnarth where the Buddha delivered his first sermon about 2,500 years ago. They have attempted to recreate the deer park that existed in these times but we're not sure how the Buddha would feel about seeing the deer fenced in and birds in cages. We also went to see the Jain temple in Sarnath, which was pretty impressive and got hammered by the resident mosquitoes. After another ride in the extremely slow rickshaw we took a stroll along the ghats at night, still very busy and very crazy...

The ghats at night

The last morning Jon was up early to take a final walk along the ghats and soak up some more of Varanasi's unique atmosphere - it was just such an interesting place. Back at the steps up to the hotel I met a friendly goat who posed for this lovely photo - he must have known I'm a Capricorn.

What is it?

The holy city of Varanasi

Varanasi, India