Varanasi

Varanasi, regarded as the holiest of the 7 holy cities in India.  It is where Hindus come to bathe in the Ganges River to wash away their sins.  It is also where they come to die in order to reach salvation.  

When loved ones die, their bodies are brought to Varanasi from all over India.  A cremation ceremony is performed on the banks of the Ganges and the ashes are washed into the river.  The cremation takes around 3 hours and will cost the family around 5000 rupees ($100 USD).  If you are poor, you can use the electric cremator (which only takes 2 minutes), but people try to avoid this option because it's bad Karma.  Not all bodies are burned before being put in the river:  young children, pregnant women, holy men, and cows are wrapped and weighed down with rocks before being thrown in the water.  If a person is killed by a serpent bite, their body is placed on a bamboo raft that is sent down the Ganges - if they're lucky, a holy man will see them and bring them back to life.

In addition to human remains in the Ganges, a fair bit of garbage and sewage can be seen making its way into the river.  Dom intended to come here to experience a spiritual bath like the locals, but after seeing what the water looked like, he opted out figuring it's probably safer to keep our health (and sins) :).  Amazed at watching their daily routine in the river, we quickly realized how wimpy we are compared to them.. on numerous occasions, we saw them brushing their teeth and even drinking the water from the banks of the Ganges, and somehow they don't get sick.  

One great way to see the Varanasi ghats (the various series of steps leading down to the river) is to take a boat ride during sunrise and sunset.  During sunset, you see the illuminated buildings and prayer ceremonies.  During sunrise, you see the locals performing their daily bathing and laundry rituals.

We also walked the old town's narrow (about 1.5m wide) streets, which are shared with numerous cows, carts, motorbikes, and pedestrians.  This becomes especially tricky when it gets dark.. and you also have to navigate the cow manure.

Cows are sacred here and are free to roam wherever they please.  It seems they are never killed, even if in misery.  Dom saw a cow dying on one of the roads…  a man put a blanket over cow and appeared to simply be sitting and praying as the cow waited to die.  

We've also noticed a lot of cows picking through and eating the various garbage on the ground (not just food scraps - they apparently also eat paper, plastic bags, etc.).  The first time we saw a cow eating garbage, it really surprised us.  By chance, we had just started reading a book called "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer, which is a really interesting read about where the meat that Americans eat, comes from.  Now we wonder if the garbage that we see the cows eating here is actually better than what's being fed to the animals back home…!!  Crazy.