The adventures of Trent

The holy city of Varanasi

G'day all, so me and matt are currently in the holy city of varanasi. For both us being not very religious, this trip so far has brought us across some very holy sites to a number of different faiths. For example, in Chennai we went to the church of Saint Thomas, which is aparently one of 3 churches in the whole world that is built on top of the burial place of one of Jesus' deciples, which is an extremely holy place for christians. And on our way to varanasi from Nepal, we stopped by Kushinagar which is the death and cremation place of Buddha, which is a popular pilgrimage place of buddhists, as this place is also only 100 km south of where buddha was born in Nepal, 200 km north of where buddha gave his first speech, and 150 east of where buddha reached enlightment.

So yeah, we are currently sitting in Varanasi, also a very holy place to Hindu's, where alot of people from all over india and the world come to bathe, be blessed by and be cremated along the ganges. All the way along the ganges there are these ghats, which represent different places for different purposes for use by different castes, for washing, bathing and cremation etc.

Over the last couple of days we've spent a bit of time down at the burning ghats watching people being cremated. And its actually quite expensive to be cremated here as cremation is charge per kg of wood and each different wood has a different price, which leads to the differing amounts of wood that is used for each cremation depending on how much money the family has. The bodies that have alot of wood are ok, and burn away happily and don't really smell, but there was one yesterday that had hardly any wood and it stank like a mother fucker, even all the indian's around us were covering their faces to avoid the smell.

And what makes it even more interesting is when the body is quite well burnt, the untouchables who are in charge of the whole thing, move the body around so that the unburnt parts are put onto the fire and are burnt, and one of their finest moves when moving the body around is to smash the skull in, which yesterday they hit this really crispy dude and his brain started bubbling out of his smashed skull. Yes it sounds absolutely disgusting, but its not really.....But I must say that its quite an experience watching someone be cremated, at first i thought it would be just wrong and would just stink, but its definitely something to see.......

So yeah, one more day left here along side the banks of the ganges in Varanasi then we're off to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, hopefully if the sky clears up, we'll be able to see it by full moon, which is aparently supposed to be magical....but lets keep our fingers crossed. Until next time..... cheers and beers.

posted by Trent @ 5:13 PM