Varanasi - This is the End. This is the Beginning.

Varanasi is not for the weak.

I keep coming back to that over and over as I try to find words to describe this place.  So many times I sit down to write and every time there is nothing.  Not words anyway.  Instead a constant flood of sensory memories and an awareness that this place is unlike any place I had ever been before.

Varanasi is the last stop.  The last for us before heading home.  The last for souls before they enter the after life.  The Final Destination.  So it is fitting that this place would be everything you could ever feel, taste, touch and smell.  At the train station you are overcome with the stench of urine. The sight of rats taking over the railway tracks.  Everywhere is poverty and decay.  Dirty little hands pulling at you and pleading with hollowed out eyes.   You have crossed over now.  This is the point of no return before you begin to return again.

The streets are filled with garbage, wild dogs and wilder children.  We pass though a shantytown where street waifs run along side trying to grab at anything not secured.  These are not the smiling children.  These are the devil’s children of our own making.  There is a dog squatting, shaking uncontrollably and urinating all over itself.  The side of its body torn open.  Ribs, sinew, flesh peeled back like a macabre science experiment.  Most likely the result of a car accident.  I want to vomit.  I want to go home.

A man on a motorcycle hits an old woman as she crosses the street.  She falls to the ground. He does not stop.  No one does. Not even us.  The place smells like sewage and human sweat.  My mouth tastes like metal.  We arrive at our hotel and a man won’t stop following me as he tries to get me to come into his shop.  “Tourism is very bad this year, “our guide tells me. “He really wants to make some money.”  He sells cheap scarfs and incense.  He is always in the lobby asking you to buy.  Always. He is there at midnight.  He is there at 5 am.  I think this is his purgatory.  Mine is to always say no.

We take a boat at sunset to see the burning Ghats.  On the way we walk narrow alleys filled with bulls and vendors hawking death shrouds.  There is always a fortuneteller trying to grab your hand and read your palm.  The Ghat is lined with beggars – old women and people with no feet.  They wave tin plates at you and plead to be seen.  I close my eyes. 

In the distance we see smoke.  A flock of birds descends on us and for a moment, the sky is blackened from their wings.  Then we see the fires.  So many fires.  Stacks of wood as high as mountains.  Bodies waiting to be sent to the afterlife covered in flowers and oil.  The bulls eat the flowers.  Dogs scour the pyres for bones and feast off drippings from burning flesh.  The air is thick with smoke.  It smells like incense and decay.  It tastes like death.    This is life uncensored.  Unsentimental and impossible to avoid.

The dogs will not stop barking.  All along the Ghats you here them rising into a crescendo. Walking along the river is a lone dog.  He is thin and unwanted.  His presence makes everything around him howl and scream.  A boy picks up an oar and I know what he will do.  Before I can scream he brings the oar down onto the dog’s skull.  He drops like a stone.  Now I hear myself screaming.  Now I see myself leaping into the river.  Now I feel the boatman stop me as he waves his oar cursing at the boy.  The dog is screaming with us.  I know in this moment we want to kill the boy.  I don’t know what stopped us.  I hate this place.  I hate it so much.

Varanasi is for the soul.

The sun is rising and the river is awakening.  The only sound is the oars on our boat kissing the water pushing us slowly into the sun.  The dogs are asleep and the bulls are folded in meditation.  I drink coffee on the deck of a guesthouse at the last Ghat.  It is too early to serve a cooked breakfast but the owner says he can serve me pie.  The coffee is enough.  There is so much to drink in that I am full.  Holy men begin their morning rituals.   Lost Westerners are finding themselves doing yoga on the steps.  Everyone is meditating with a feral dog beside them.  Before the heat of the sun becomes unbearable I want to walk the length of the river.  From this Ghat that is alive to the burning Ghat that is death.

There is an abandoned building near the river’s edge.  In it live wild mother dogs with their pups and wild chickens with their chicks.  There are four men stacking wood.  They have come to cremate a young man in the prime of his life.  Maybe 30.  Long black hair.  Skin so supple. Still firm and virile.   His mother smooths ghee on his skin and weeps quietly.  A hairless smooth priest puts flowers on his eyes and waves incenses as he walks three times around the pyre.  His brother silently stands with a flame and then, with a deep breath, touches it to the wood.  A mother hen pushes her chicks into a pile of sleeping puppies and then nestles herself into the belly of the bitch.  The mother of the burning boy reaches down and strokes them all gently.  The four men stand vigil as their brother burns.  Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust.  Children run down to the river to swim.  Behind us is the rhythmic sound of the laundry men slapping bed sheets into stones.  This is not the burning Ghat.  This is just a place where people come to live and die together.  This is the most peaceful place in the world.

Along the river people come to bathe.  There is so much laughter.  A father and his two sons step in and playfully splash each other.  Their mother chides them while she tries to take a photo.  Now they splash her and she laughs.  They are all so beautiful.  The water is so clean.  There are fish swimming waiting to nibble heels.  I wade in.  I want to be brave enough to sink to the bottom and come back up again.  But I am not.  Not today.  Today I stand in the river and drink in all the life happening around me.  The next time I am here I will swim to the other side and back again.  The truth is, I already have many times before.  We all have.

On the main street is a fabric store that sells gold threaded silk for weddings.  People come from all over to buy sari’s here.  But mostly people come to see the massive Braham Bull who sleeps in the center of the store every afternoon during the hottest time of the day.  Bulls are sacred in Varanasi and this bull is the most sacred of all.  He is beautiful and he is gentle.  No one knows exactly when or why he made his way here but he did.  Just like all of us.   The store considers themselves blessed by his presence and built a little shrine to worship him.  They feed him fruit and rub sandalwood oil on his giant horns.  No one gets as good of customer service as this bull.  Somehow that seems right.

We make our way through the maze of streets to the Blue Lassi.  The best lassi in all of India.  It’s been here for a seventy five years.  It will be here for a thousand more.  Tucked in a small alcove line with benches and papered with photos of everyone who discovers themselves in this place.  The elderly man who is the e grandson of the man who began this place painstakingly prepares me a bowl of curds and decadence.  I sit on the ledge and watch the endless procession before me.  Chanting men carrying loved ones to their final destination.  So close I can reach out and run my fingers through their hair.  Stroke the cheek of the one who is now gone.  The old man smiles and hands me a clay bowl.  It smells of cinnamon and pomegranates.  It tastes like joy.  I spoon life into my mouth the old man begins to sing. 

I think I will go and sit by the river for a while.

I love this place.  I love this place so much.

(I decided to not caption the photos for this post.  Everything that needs to be said has been said and with Varanasi, you need to sit and take it all in for yourself.  Let it tell you it's own story. Better yet "see" it for yourself! Namaste.)