The holiest city in Hinduism, on the banks of the holiest river, for one of the biggest festivals of the year. They compare it to Christmas in our country. Everybody is festive, and constantly wishing everyone “Happy Diwali.”
The first night we went to the Ganges river for the Aarti ceremony, a 3000 year old blessing at which Hindu holy men light candles, play music, and pray for family and world peace. Four hours before sunset we could see thousands of people walking toward the river (from miles away), and guessed how mobbed it would be.
Driving in Varanasi is another new experience. We saw jammed roads in places like Vietnam and Delhi, but nothing like this. Cars, buses, trucks, auto-rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, bicycles, and pedestrians (no sidewalks here) share the narrow roads with cows (sacred),monkeys, goats, and other animals. Fran still won't open her eyes. Anyway, we drove until the car could no longer move, than walked through the crowd to the river.
The rituals of life and death occur daily in and around the holy water of the Ganges River. We rose at 4:00 a.m. this morning to go back to the river, and moved through tens of thousands of pilgrims and residents walking (barefoot) through the darkness of the city to the river for morning ablutions. Every devout Hindu aspires to die in Varanasi, and to be cremated at the river's edge. There are so many that cremations are conducted 24 hours a day; they are especially poignant at dawn, as the sun rises over the river. We watched this morning's event from a boat on the river, and placed holy lights in the river for each of our parents and our kids.
After breakfast, we visited Sarnath, where the Buddha preached his message of enlightenment more than 2500 years ago; Varanasi is also the birthplace of Buddhism.
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