Varanasi (a.k.a. Very Nasty)

Mitch tries to serenade us with a Sitar.

Crossing the border between Nepal and India provided a sudden insight to the way that we would be living for the next three months. Without delay, there were far more people. Buildings were taller and more crowded together. The streets were full of ever kind of garbage imaginable, and my sole focus became trying to avoid stepping in one of the innumerable cow, dog, and human organic landmines. Burning garbage on both sides and in the middle of the street added to the filth. People were smiling less, walking faster, and speaking much more loudly; often yelling. Though it sounds awful, and in a way was, it was also fresh and exciting. As wonderful and relaxed as Nepal was, we were ready for India’s excitement, energy, and potential for exploration.

We walked through the border crossing, and once we were 500 meters from Nepal, we got on a bus bigger than anything we’d seen on a road anywhere in the last month. The bus defied almost everything I’d expected. When I try to conceive of a bus in India, I think of a rickety old machine held together by an assortment of odds and ends. In my mind there are people everywhere: in all the seats, standing, on the luggage racks, hanging out the windows, and trying not to fall off the roof. I also imagine there being an assortment of goats and chickens accompanying the many travelers. Instead the bus was massive, consisting of nearly 100 seats with ample legroom. However, it was incredibly dirty and broken, with sharp things sticking out all over the place. The best part was that we (Ben, Danielle, Grayson, myself, Mitch, and Ryan) were the only ones on the bus for the first few hours, and it didn’t really fill up until around hour #10 (the entire ride was about 15 hours). Even when it did fill, they never stopped for more people than there were seats, and there certainly weren’t any animals. It was a good first lesson for India: never expect.

Chai man on the street - Ten cents for tea.

All in all, the 15-hour bus ride was a great deal of fun. Mitch and Ryan sat behind us, occasionally blasting out classic rock hits to which we would all momentarily rock out. There was always something to look at out the window, and it was comfortable enough to have the occasional nap. At our first stop, the boys got to use the bus stop urinal (a designated wall) while Danielle walked around a bit confused until she managed to find a shop owner she could pay. We filled up on 3 rupee samosas (and made sure to eat them with only our right hands) before getting back on our new home, the bus. The best part of the ride was the incredible coincidence: seeing Valentine walking down the street. Ben yelled at him from the bus window, which was followed by a moment of stunned silence, before the bus rolled away out of sight. He had been the first tourist we’d seen all day (and we weren’t even sure of the city we saw him in or what he was doing there).

We abandoned our bushome for Varanasi after living in it for around 15 hours. I’m going to have trouble talking about Varanasi, as it was simultaneously the ‘greatest’ and ‘worst’ place I’ve ever been (but mostly just the greatest - it has since become the #1 city I hope to one day re-visit). We expected to be instantly swarmed with touts and rickshaw drivers after exiting the bus, but were happy to find that there were only two or three milling about. After negotiating a price, we decided to take 2 rickshaws between the six of us. For those of you who have never done this sort of traveling, note that getting a taxi or a rickshaw from a train station, bus station, or airport almost never works out. The driver always, always tries to rip you off.

A woman begging on the ghats.

After awhile, most people figure out what the common tricks are, and avoid being had. However, in Varanasi we done got had real good by these rickshaw hoodlums. What we later learned was a 20-minute walk (and thus 3 minute drive) to our guesthouse ended up being a 10-minute drive to a place further away than we had started. Following this, we split up: four stayed behind because the rickshaws “couldn’t get through the narrow streets”, while Grayson and I went into the narrow spaghetti streets with our guide to find our hotel. We walked for at least half an hour before arriving. Once we arrived, we checked to make sure our reservation was still good before heading back. The walk only needed to be about 2 minutes, but the idea is that you get so sick of walking the long distance that you decide “screw it” and you go somewhere closer after going back to get your stuff. The change in guesthouse results in a nice commission for your faithful guide. Fortunately for us there was a great someone at our hotel (Leslie) who was not too impressed with our driver. He walked back with us, the entire time lecturing the guy who tried to cheat us. In the end, we had a great pre-tour of the old city streets, though it took about 2 hours to do what should have taken 10 minutes. Chris and Caitlyn were at the same guesthouse (our reason for going) and the eight of us chatted briefly over veg korma before collapsing into bed.


We didn’t really get to see Varanasi until the next day. I woke up early, as I usually do, and since nobody else was in operation I decided to go for a walk on my own. Being a city of around one million, there are a number of large, dusty, noisy, and dirty streets. However, these can be avoided if you stay in the “old town”, which is the carless (motorbikes fit, so people ride them, though they should never be allowed) area just behind the ghats that line the Ganges. The place is a labyrinth, full of shops, street food, delicious smells, awful smells, crazy colour, crazier people, and you name it. It’s almost impossible not to get lost at first, as the buildings are all several stories high, and all the alleyways look the same. You feel like a rat running through a maze (though you then see rats running through the maze, which confirms that you are, indeed, only a human much less knowledgeable of the puzzle than said rat, and with fewer shortcuts at your disposal).

A man selling useless plastic junk.

Needless to say, I was very careful when venturing from our guesthouse alone. I would count each turn and make note of several landmarks as I changed direction. The roads were beautiful: stone paths surrounded by old buildings and, despite being between around 1-4 meters in width, full of people, motorbikes, and huge grumpy bulls, unwilling to budge from their pile of delicious garbage if you need to pass. While the senses are on fire, the most exciting stimulus for me was the human diversity. Within 6 strides you pass a grumpy police officer, a beggar with missing limbs, a great fat man resembling Chinese Buddha deep-frying samosas in a blackened wok, a group of women in saris, a camera-toting tourist, and a saddhu in saffron robes and covered with face paint, a long white beard, malas, and dreadlocks exploding in every direction. And they’re all yelling, eating, farting, spitting, singing at the top of their lungs or staring at you as if you’ve got a cucumber growing from your forehead. Then add the sounds: a pinch of hindi trance music, a dollop of hair-pullingly loud motorbike horn blasting, a dash of tabla, and a touch of unapologetic throat flem clearing. Just as you feel as though you couldn’t experience one more thing without your brain melting, a monkey tries to steal your bag and a group of chanting men rush by you carrying on their shoulders a dead body.

After exactly 3 left turns and one right turn (and not in that order) I found the Goddess Ganga, flowing eternally from the top of Shiva’s head. The Ganges is the massive holy river that flows through Varanasi, and is the central attraction for Hindu pilgrims (and the occasional non-Hindu tourist). It is lined along the North shore with ghats, which are essentially just stairs leading down to the river. Pilgrims come to Varanasi to pray, to be cleansed by the river, and to die. To die or be cremated in the holy city is considered auspicious (if you do, it is said that you are freed from the cycle of rebirth/reincarnation).

I didn’t want to stray too far and risk not being able to find my way back. I had also been warned countless times about the many people who hang out along the ghats waiting to rip you off or take your money in any possible way. Though I still wanted to stand beside the famous river, so I walked carefully down the huge staircase covered in a green slippery substance (among many other things). After almost falling at the bottom, I met Chen-Tu, a local silk producer and University student. He was a gem, and I was very lucky. We walked together for a while, and he told me all about the ghats. We sat together beside the bigger of the two burning ghats, and drank chai while we watched human bodies burn over wooden debris. He told me how 300 bodies were burned daily between the two ghats and that each body takes almost 3 hours. Later, when I came back, I counted 15 bodies burning at one time. Afterwards, the ashes and whatever unburned remains are shoveled into the river. Bodies are burning 24 hours per day, and at night it’s an incredible sight. In the morning is the most quiet, but there are many more people who take advantage of this to pan for gold jewelry in the water. Chen-tu also showed be the hash smoking temple, the heroin-addict hangout, and the burning ghat wood stock before I finally returned back to the guesthouse (to find Ben just waking up).

A firee guy (holy cow) on the banks of the Ganga.

We spent the majority of our time in the marvelous Varanasi just experiencing. There aren’t really “things to do” or tourist attractions. You walk along the ghats. You get lost in the labyrinth of ancient alleyways. You try to avoid being overwhelmed by doing nothing. You escape for a little while to a western-style café with espresso. It was a perfect reintroduction to India.

If you ever make it to Varanasi (if I could add only one thing to your bucket list, it would be to go) you absolutely MUST go to Blue Lassi. In fact, this hole-in-the-wall lassi shop is a good enough reason in itself for you to quit your job, buy a plane ticket to Delhi, hop on a hot and crowded train to Varanasi, and fight your way through the streets and alleys to get there. For those of you who don’t know what a lassi is - google it. For the rest of you (and the now newly enlightened) I will tell you that there is no better lassi on earth. The shop is several generations old, and the old man making your drink looks as if he’s done nothing else for the last 60 years (and he probably hasn’t). You can get apple, banana, coconut, chocolate, orange, plain, salty, mango, any combination of the above, and more. Each one takes about 10 minutes to make (I took a video of the entire process). During this ten minutes, don’t be surprised to witness two or three mobs run by carrying a human corpse on their shoulders and chanting in Hindi. They’re running to the ghats to burn it and throw it in the river. When your lassi arrives, if you’re lucky enough to have found a seat, you try to simultaneously drink it and prevent it from spilling all over your lap, as they are always overflowing. The flavour is like nothing your mouth has ever experienced.

Ryan (back), Ben, and Mitch (front) as we shimmy along a
metal bar so as to avoid walking through a river of sewage
and mud as the ghats are cleaned after the monsoon.

Varanasi is mind-blowing because of the little things, yet it still manages to be greater than the sum of its parts. There are monkeys everywhere, and they live on the roofs. Ninety-nine percent of buildings have flat rooftops where people dry laundry, grow plants, and hang out. They provide optimal monkey-watching towers. My memories seems surreal: monkeys soaring gracefully across the urban landscape, with the setting sun behind them, and hundreds of children, one standing on nearly every roof, flying homemade kites.

We couldn’t keep away from the burning ghats. Understandably, photography isn’t allowed, but if you google image search then you can see better photographs than I would have been able to take anyways. My most vivid memory of the ghats is standing within 3 meters of a burning body, and having the smoke blowing in my face. I was slowly being covered with the smell of burning flesh and a thin layer of black burning human sludge. Meanwhile cows and dogs are milling around, and some of them are eating left over bits of flesh and licking the ground where a corpse was recently burnt. I stare into the fire and realize what I had previously thought was a log was actually a large, intact femur. I can nearly reach out and grab it.

Candles lit and lined along the rim of our boat; waiting to be set afloat in banana leaf cups.

We met some Calgarians in Varanasi, Jason and Sarah. They were the ones who told us about Blue Lassi. They also told us that they had seen a number of bodies thrown directly into the river without burning, and watched them drift slowly away downstream. After asking some locals later on, we learned that they akip the burning step if the body is that of a holy man, a pregnant woman, or a child. I can’t imagine how many bones are in the bottom of that river, or the types of creatures that, over the centuries, have evolved to take advantage of this unique niche. I can’t imagine anyone would actually want to study that. To be honest, with dozen or so point sources of raw sewage entering the holy river in Varanasi alone, I can’t imagine there would be much living in there.

We had initially planned to only stay in Varanasi for about 4 days, as the majority of people you talk to will tell you that it is a complete shit-hole and that you should leave as soon as possible after doing the essentials. Danielle, Ben, Grayson and I all had train tickets for Bodhgaya, where the Buddha achieved enlightenment. I was so in love with Varanasi that I decided to cancel this ticket and stay for an extra couple of days. The biggest factor responsible for helping me to make this decision was the occurrence of a huge festival on the day following our scheduled departure. So Danielle and Grayson left, while Ben and myself stayed behind. Mitch and Ryan also left the morning of the festival (after a couple hours of frantic searching for Mitch’s suddenly lost passport - a horror story for backpackers in India), leaving us there with Jason and Sarah to celebrate.

During the day, the festival was wild. There were so many people in the streets and along the river that you actually couldn’t move. It was loud. It was hot. People had come to bathe, be cleansed, pray for luck, bathe their water buffalo, eat, die, steal, beg, and so on. Everyone was there. Kids painted entirely blue as Kali, a cow eating marigolds, a man rushing around in a suit, yelling into two cell phones at once, people throwing rice on the mats of disfigured beggars for good luck, and hairy wet men in underwear everywhere. I’ve never experienced an event like it. It was like my previous description of Varanasi times 10. I took a video, and I’ll try to make it available.

Ben, Sarah, and Jason.

As the sun set and disappeared, the chaos turned to magic. Jason had heard of a “free” boat ride, apparently put on by the owner of our guesthouse. Ben and I weren’t too keen, as we have become more than a little bit wary when it comes to the F word (free) in India. However, we didn’t have a set plan, so we decided to walk along the ghats and look for this boat. It was scheduled to depart an hour before the time when we started looking for it, yet we found it anyways, docked and just getting ready to go (we weren’t surprised to find it waiting… Indian time is something else). As we walked down to the boat, which had about 30 people in it, we were stopped in our tracks. Inside the boat, out of the hundreds of boats full of peopl (and thousands of people all around) was Lucie! We couldn’t believe the coincidence. She was apparently visiting from Kolkata for a few days only, and was walking along when someone invited her into the free boat. For a few minutes we were stunned by the coincidence, and had trouble saying anything at all.

The boat finally left just as it was getting dark (at about 6 o’clock). As we paddled out into the dark water, with hundreds of other boats all around, we started to get a better view of Varanasi and the ghats lining the Ganges. It was an incredible sight, and one I’ll never forget. On every ghat and property there were candles lined on the ground, each separated from the other by only two feet (it reminded me fondly of Lethbridge, where you can’t even keep a match lit long enough to light a cigarette). There were also Christmas lights everywhere. There was music too, and it was everywhere. The moon was full, and a steady stream of fireworks poured into the sky all night long, lighting the river with blue, green and gold fire. The burning ghats seemed to have been intensified along with everything else, because even from way out in the river we could see the flames of more than a dozen bodies soaring high into the air.

We were on the boat for 4 hours. During that time, we collectively lit 5001 candles (the 1 for good luck) and placed them in banana leaf boats on the river. As the river flows slowly at this time of year, and there isn’t even the slightest breeze, you can almost imagine what the river would look like with all of the boats out there doing this. Almost. We had to tow an extra boat behind us that was filled exclusively with candles and banana leaf carriers. Everyone on the boat worked hard for 4 hours, but it was completely worth it. A month later, my clothes are still stained with wax. I couldn’t imagine a better way to cap off our stay in Varanasi.

The next day was our last day in Varanasi. We had booked a train to Jaipur followed by a train to Jodhpur, in Rajasthan (the opposite side of the country). This is where we were to meet Danielle and Grayson. Our train was waitlisted number 4 and 5, but everyone we talked to said that it wouldn’t be a problem, as people that close on the waiting list nearly always get on.

Bhang: The leaves and flowerheads of cannabis, used as a narcotic.

Since our first train (18 hours) was scheduled to depart in the evening, we went in the morning for a lassi with Lucie and some other friends. It turns out that we got Bhang lassis (even though I had asked for one without). I only ate half of mine, since I was worried about getting on the train, and I had never experienced the effects before (though was told that they were quite mild- all in all I am fairly risk averse). Everyone else finished theirs. I was not prepared for the effect that they had, and, though I won’t go into detail, can say quite confidently that my first bhang lassi will also be my last bhang lassi.

I was still “uncomfortably altered” 7 hours later when we went to catch our train. After an awful rickshaw ride, during which we got stuck in a gridlock traffic jam (like a Chineese finger trap - where the vehicles are all interlocked and nobody can move without the other moving), we arrived to have our first ever train station experience. Now, when I arrived to the airport in Delhi, I expected it to be BAD… really really bad… but it was fine. I had heard the same horrific warnings about train stations, but was not so concerned after the airport false alarm.

Enjoying some chai after a refreshing swim.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the festival was the day before. We walked in and we couldn’t move. We were in a massive dark room, resembling a warehouse, and it was full of yelling and pushing people. We had no idea where to go, where to ask where to go, or where to even begin. There wasn’t even a train in sight, so we left the building immediately in hopes that maybe (just maybe) we had accidentally walked into a prison or government building. No such luck. Eventually we found our train, and were able to talk to the station attendant standing nearby (none of this would have been a problem if we had seats). He took one look at our waitlisted tickets, took out his pen, and wrote “TICKET CANCELLED” in capital letters over the piece of paper. I almost had a nervous breakdown. The situation was desperate. We ran around with our luggage for the next 30 minutes (the train left in 60) trying to find some way, any way, of getting on the train. We found a nice security guard at a tourist help office in a corner who didn’t speak English, but dragged us along to a dark hidden room. They made Ben wait outside, and pulled me into the room. We walked down a hallway, and entered a room without windows full of people. He point to a long thin room, and told me to go in (supposedly to buy tickets). I went in, and immediately saw that he had brought me into the staff entrance for the ticket booth. Before me were a dozen ticket sellers at their booths. Before them were over a thousand people lined up in Indian style. If you’ve never seen a lineup in India, you’ll know that this actually means “a large mob of desperate yelling people waving their arms in the air because there isn’t enough room to bring them down by their sides again”. It was true chaos, unlike any that I’d ever seen before.

I bought both our tickets from the man at the booth, and was confused at how the cost for both of us was only 258 rupees (5 dollars) each for an 18-hour ride. Nevertheless, we got on the train and we left Varanasi.

Varanasi was one of the wildest experiences of my life. From the cobra charmers to the rats; from the river ceremonies every night to witnessing a sketchy opium deal at a government hash shop; from the Sadhu who claimed to sleep only 3 hours per night to the people sleeping on the ghats for the festival; from the beggars to the cop breaking his bamboo rod over a rickshaw driver’s back in broad daylight. I won’t ever forget Varanasi. I plan to one day return.