Varanasi

First off, I just posted some photos and comments from Mamallapuram -- they're dated 10/3/07 and you'll find them below the post about Mukti. (Sorry, I'm having some blogger technical difficulties today.)


We're in Varanasi. Here's a photo of sunrise over the Ganges:


We arrived here after a 6-hour jeep ride and a 19-hour train ride out of the Himalayas. We're now back in "real" India (after spending about 2 weeks in a place that was a fascinating mix of Nepal and Tibet).


Anyway, here are some new experiences we've had here in Varanasi. This is from today alone, and it's only 1:30 p.m.:

1. A dog urinated on Dan's leg.


2. We watched a public cremation.


3. As the fire from a previous cremation was being extinguished nearby, ashes flew all over us. Meaning that we were covered with a dead person's ashes.


4. We learned to cook stuffed paratha (a pan-cooked bread stuffed with potatoes) and a kind of fried dough filled with potatoes.


5. We watched an old sadhu (a holy man who wanders around in orange robes) defecating on the sidewalk.

Varanasi is really great, but incredibly filthy. I mean really, really, really dirty. You know I have low standards for cleanliness, but this place is nasty. All manner of cow, goat, monkey, dog, and human excrement lines the streets (along with all kinds of garbage).

Then there's the Ganges. It's so heavily polluted that the water is septic. This if from our guidebook: "Samples from the river show the water has 1.5 million fecal coliform bacteria per 100 ml of water. In water that is safe for bathing this figure should be less than 500." We're not even talking about drinking here -- we're just talking about water that's safe to dip your toe in.

The river is holy, though, so people are diving right in, splashing around, dunking themselves under, and, yes, drinking it.

We, on the other hand, are glad to have brought along our wide array of antibacterial products.