Varanasi and Sarnath

Well, as our time comes to and end, here in India, I am left a little sentimental. We've had such a great time and we will take with us many great memories!
I am very happy to spend some of our last days here in Varanasi. Varanasi has proven to be one of the most interesting places we've visited, and one of the most emotional...
Watching the bodies burn at the burning ghats was quite intense for me. It brought up many thoughts about my own mortality and brought to the surface many suppressed feelings about loved ones who have passed away in the last few years. Death is an interesting notion and how every culture and religion comes to terms with it is even more interesting!
The other day Ashby and I took a side trip to a tiny town called Sarnath. Sarnath is where the Buddha came to preach his message of the middle way to nirvana, after he reached enlightenment at Bodhgaya. Now Ashby and I can say that we have been to two out of the four important sites on the Buddhist circuit! Bodhgaya was better in my opinion, but I am happy to have stood at the site where Buddha's first sermon was preached!
Tonight I leave you with the Buddha's last words, "All things must pass. Work on your own salvation with diligence."
-Cara

Our hotel in Varanasi

A holy man-Sadhu



Ganga Aarti ceremony held at the Dasaswamedh Ghat

Sarnath-Dhanekh Stupa (this marks the spot where Buddha preached his first sermon)

The modern temple in Sarnath

Buddhist Ruins

Buddhist Ruins

A Bodhi tree in Sarnath-transplanted from the derect descendant of the original Bodhi tree

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)

Today we walked along the ghats in Varanasi. There is so much going on down there, that you could easily spend days there. Today I got swindled into getting an Aruvedic massage right there in the open! All I did was shake his hand because he introduced himself, and next thing I know, I'm sitting on the ground getting felt up by some strange man saying "don't worry, pay as you like". I've heard that one before. It cost me two hundred rupees just to get him to stop. We also saw a man with dancing monkeys. One monkey was dressed up in little clothes and danced, and the other one played the drums! It was really crazy, but kind of felt sad for the monkeys. Maybe we shouldn't have supported that sort of thing. They had really good rhythm though. There is one more thing that I want to talk about, but I don't think cara wants me to. So here it goes... At the train station a few days ago, a man walked up to me and asked if he could clean my ears. I must have looked puzzled, because he pointed to a whole tool bag with long, skinny tools. I said "okay, is it safe?" He said "don't worry, safe." He sat me down on the concrete, and started Digging in my ear with a giant metal Q-tip. We agreed on twenty rupees. He cleaned out most of the right one, (and I mean big chunks) and then tried to sell me a little bottle of "medicine" for five hundred rupees. I told him no I just wanted my ears cleaned. Then he proceeded to put some drops in my ear, and I said "not extra?", and he said "as you like". It was too late. By this time a large group of people had gathered around me because each time the man pulled out a nice big chunk, he showed it around like a little wax trophy. He let the "medicine" sit in my ear for a couple minutes, and after some digging pulled out something that looked like a fat slug from the depths of my right ear. Then he wanted to charge me more for the other ear. At this point, I was done. I didn't want to pay the ridiculous amount that he was asking to dig around in my fragile ear canal with medieval tools and some mystery medicine. Unfortunately, now everything is a little imbalanced, and I feel like my left ear could really use a cleaning.-ashby

Varanasi to Bodhgaya

Boats along the Ganges

A girl we met playing in the Ganges

Ashby with a cobra around his neck after we encountered a snake charmer

A young monk

Terra Cotta pots and Dias

As Ashby mentioned, we passed through Varanasi on our way to Bodhgaya.

We spent the day walking along the ghats of Varanasi, taking pictures and watching the world go by. I can tell that we will have a great time during our five-day stay in Varanasi...

...But today was our first of two days we will spend here in Bodhgaya. We went to the temple that was erected on the sacred spot where the Buddha obtained enlightenment. The original tree was murdered, but the people were able to save a sapling that is now in Shrilanka. A sapling of the tree in Shrilanka is now here in Bodhgaya, flourishing in the same soil of its sacred parent...

It was really a beautiful experience for me to sit and listen to the chanting of the monks who were praying there, and a truly peaceful energy came over me. The space where the tree sits is a very sweet space and Ashby and I agreed we will go back and sit there again tomorrow! As we were sitting under the tree, I thought to myself that I would really like to have a leaf from the tree, but it wasn't like I was going to pick one...then a leaf dropped and some of the monk quickly rushed to grab it. I realised I could have one too if I was just patient enough to wait till one dropped. I waited and waited but one did not drop, so Ashby and I decided to walk around and look at some other things. Just as we were leaving, I asked Ashby if we could just walk around the tree one more time and hope that one would drop, sure enough as we walked by a leaf dropped right in front of me! Pretty cool!

Anyway...until Varanasi...

-Cara

A Pepil leaf (Boddhi tree leaf)

Inside the temple

Monks at the Boddhi tree

The temple

Another Buddha statue

snake charmer!



This is a scale they use to weigh the wood they use for burning the corpses at the burning gahts.
Getting the perfect amount of wood to incinerate a body is a precise art form. The type of wood used is also important, some are more expensive like sandal wood.



Bodhi tree and temple

We spent yesterday in Varanasi on our way through on the train. Varanasi is a really cool city I'm glad we decided to spend five days there on our way towards Agra and Delhi. The river Ganges runs through it, as well as a couple other rivers. People from all over India go there to die, because it frees you from the cycle of rebirth and death. But more about that later.

Today we were in Bodhgaya. We sat underneath the grand child of the same Bohdi tree that the Buddha attained enlightenment. Not to sound like a hippy or anything, but there was a very serene vibe about the area. It sat next to a giant temple surrounded by a garden. All around us there were monks and nuns from all over the world praying and meditating.-ashby

Khajuraho

We were only able to spend one day in Khajuraho, but I think it was well worth it. We saw the main group of temples here, or the Western group. There are only 25 temples that remain today, from about 85 that used to exist. These temples were built from about AD 950 to 1050 and they were built in only 100 years. It is amazing to me that all these huge temples were built in such a short amount of time! Even more intriguing is the subject portrayed in all the intricate carvings...Kamasutra! Not surprisingly, there is a definite sexual energy here, but I am glad we didn't miss these unique and intriguing temples!

cold shower

We have been in Kujaraho for a day, and it is really cool. This city is famous for it's erotic temples. They were built over a thousand years ago, and they are huge temples covered in intricate carved statues of some pretty lude stuff! No one is really sure why all the sex, but the leading theory is that the people believed that, like meditation, sex was another way to achieve nirvana. Pretty interesting stuff. Now we are on our way to Bodhgaya. Bodhgaya is where prince Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment underneath a bodhi tree twenty-six centuries ago! A temple marks the spot, and a decendant of the same tree is still there. We have officially kicked the trip into overdrive, and booked the remainder of our train tickets. We only have two and a half weeks left, and we are a little sad. We still have a lot to see though, so that's nice.-ashby