The Ganges

The other day we went to the burning gahts again, and made sure nobody followed us so that we weren't hassled for money. I really learned a lot. When someone dies, they have to perform the funeral within twenty-four hours. They wrap the body in white cloth to symbolize purity, then in some brightly colored cloth. The people who handle the bodies are a seperate caste called dom. These are also the people that try to get money from you, claiming that it is to help the poor families with the price of wood. The family carries it through the streets on a bamboo stretcher to the burning gahts. First they bring it down to the water to bathe it. The body's face is unwrapped and the water is poured into the mouth three times to further purify it. Then it is carried just up the bank a little to a prepared wood pile. There are special places to burn the body depending on the caste. Closer to the Ganges is Brahmin and further up the bank is each caste successively. The First son, with newly shaved head has the duty of setting the fire. First he must bring the flame down from a temple just up the bank, then he brings it down and walks around the body five times before lighting it. There are also several things thrown on top of the pile such as sandlewood powder and incense. Women are not allowed to go to the ceremony because they could cry, and if tears are shed, then the body will not be pure. There are also three types of people that they do not burn: People that die of some disease such as leporacy, small pox, or snake bite, children under the age of twelve, and pregnant women. This is because these people are already pure. They are tied to a rock and dropped into the river. Which brings me to my next subject.

I have had a few things that I promised myself I would do in India. Among them were to see a cobra (check), see the Dalai Lama (check), Try some betel nut (delicious), and bathe in the Ganges. This last one poses a slight problem. Aside from the above-mentioned corpses sitting at the bottom, I have also learned some other disturbing facts. The Seven km. stretch of the river that contain the Gahts also contains thirty large sewer outlets. The water is so polluted that it is septic, meaning it has no dissolved oxygen. This is straight from the lonely planet guide book: Samples from the river show the water has 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria per 100ml of water. In water that is safe for bathing this figure should be less than 500! I guess we should have gone upstream. Too late now. to think the other day, an elderly man yelled at Cara in Hindi because she was washing some mud off of her shoes in the sacred river. Think tomorrow I will don a newly purchased loin cloth and maybe take a quick dip up to the neck followed by a long anti-bacterial shower. Wish me luck!-ashby

Here are some typical Gaht scenes:

Sarees drying on the gahts

some boys playing cricket

Some kind of religious thing maybe

This one was taken right before the old man yelled at Cara (that's her washing her shoes)