India Part III

After leaving Nepal, we flew directly to the holy town of Varanasi. Varanasi is located on the Ganges River and is the most Holy place in all of India for Hindus. It is considered highly sacred and fortunate to have your ashes burned and sent afloat down the Ganges. We stayed at a hotel that was just two ghats away from the famous burning ghat, which is where 24 hours a day, bodies are brought out with their remaining loved ones, dipped in the Ganges and then set on fire. It takes about an hour for the bodies to burn, after which their ashes are sent down the Ganges. The remarkable thing is that it’s so holy that it’s great luck to bath in it, drink it and pretty much do everything in it. As you can see in one of the pictures below, the people whose families cannot afford for them to be cremated are just dumped in the river. So you will literally having people swimming and bathing while 10 yds. Away a dead bloated body floats by while birds pick at the rotting flesh. Ahhhhh, India. Varanasi was the most full blown feeling of pure Indian chaos that I have felt while here, I love the place but a few days is enough for me.
Amritsar, which is home to the Golden Palace, is the most sacred site for the Sikhs. This was another fascinating place, that had people bathing (in much cleaner water) at all hours of the day. We only had half of a day there so we made our pilgrimage at 4am and spent most of the morning there. I want to learn more about the Sikh religion, but from what I could tell there was a lot of swords, big turbines and even bigger people. The Sikhs are by far the largest people we saw in India.
Our next and final stop before heading high into the Himalayas was Dharmasala. Dharmasala is the home to the Tibetan government in exile and also a hot bed of activity since the start of the recent clashes between The Chinese and Tibetans. Everywhere you turn is another Free Tibet sign and more information about charities/causes/organizations/etc… It really felt good to be there during such an important time, after being to Tibet 3 years ago I feel like I really have somewhat of an idea of what these people are fighting to regain. Go figure, the Dalai Lama was in the Stated giving a speech, but there were still a lot of influential people in Dharmasala at the time and it was great enough to be in such a positive place.