VARANASI: SHIT!

"Varanasi! Varanasi! You don't want to go there! It's full of shit! It's everywhere. Filthy!"
I'm sat in front of the log fire in Wales, with Lauren and Sir Gareth. Me and Lauren have just finished telling him about the places we really want to go and see, while we are in India. Varanasi was one of them. Sir Gareth must of felt very strongly on this point as he even interrupted his News Night viewing for this outburst.
"Filthy. Bloody awful place!" he finishes.
To be fair Sir Gareth was right. Varanasi was full of shit. Dog shit, Cow shit, human shit, and shit that you never knew existed before! It's filthy, but there is so much more to Varanasi than just shit!

There was no train from Khujuraho to Varanasi for 2 days and even then they were probably full because of the Kumbh Mela. There was no direct bus either. "Great where stuck here" I thought. Well that was until our guest house suggested:
"Private taxi Madam. Very cheap! Very good!"
It did turn out to be very cheap for a 9 hour drive in your own private car. "We'll do it" we said.
The next day we awoke before sunrise, ready for our big drive. As we exited the guesthouse we were greeted by a shiny white, brand new car. "Well this makes a change" I thought after all the transport we had been before looked like it was falling apart. Then a man appeared. He was tall and dark skinned with a thick black moustache. He had an air of calm and collectiveness about him. His face was expressionless as he said,
"Hello. I am your driver."
Our driver was a man of few words, but that didn't matter. He was there to do a job: Drive! Anyway. I didn't care because he liked music and he played the best selection of Bollywood retro tunes ever. This guy was seriously cool. He kept stopping every now and again. Firstly for his morning Puja (prayers) but then after that at random places, to talk to different men. When he did this he would always take with him a leather file which I saw inside of once. It had lots of documents and typed papers. He would never say to us what he was doing during these little excursions. On one of these occasions I got out to buy some masala crisps (love them and their E numbers!) as me and Lauren were starving. He seemed quite unhappy when he saw me out of the car.
"I need some water as well" I explained.
"Not here. I will take you to the water" he calmly but firmly said. As we got back into the car, two beggars leered at us and started trying to touch me and Lauren through the window. He shut the window and stared them away with his eyes. "Nobody messes with the driver" I thought.

It was on another of his stops, when he was out the car, Lauren turned to me and said:
"Do you think our driver is some kind of assassin or hit man!"
I looked around. The seats were covered with towels and white cloth; he kept a leather file; he made secret stops to talk to different people; and he has great music taste. He had to be a hit man! It was like that movie with Tom cruise and Jamie Foxx. Collateral, but this time he was the hit man and the driver. All he needed now was some black leather gloves. How I wished he had black leather gloves. If I'd had, had some, I would of given them to him. As you can tell, I was not scared at the thought of our driver being a potential Hit man. In fact I quite liked it. If that makes me morally wrong for liking Hit men, then so be it!
Hit man dropped us by the train station as cars aren't allowed into the centre of Varanasi. I refused his offer to find us a Auto rickshaw driver (because as you know I'm a strong independent woman and everything), but as soon as we got out of his car and out of his protection, we were like lambs to the slaughter. Now I'd heard Varanasi was crazy, but even I'm a little bit like a rabbit in the head lights! There are men pissing at the side of us; a open manhole in the street; traffic everywhere; and the taxi drivers are non stop! I run straight back to Hit man.
"Actually, could you ring that friend of yours" I plead. He smoothly gets out his phone and dials without a word. His friend arrives in minutes. How does he do it. After seeing us off safely, Hit man drives away into the sunset, off on his next mission. Probably to shoot some high ranking official.

Hit mans friend drives us as far as he can in his Auto rickshaw, but the last part of the journey has to be done on foot. I'm glad we have Hit mans friend to guide us, as once you get into the old city it turns into a maze of small alleys, filled with pilgrims; cows; dogs; street vendors and just, you guessed it! Shit! . All I think is "How the Hell will we ever find our way round this place!" We also have touts flowing us like vultures.
"Where you go?"
"Which hostel?"
"No wrong way. I tell you. You go this way!"
I turn round.
"I'm with him! Go away!"
I also feel like saying, "I'm with Hit mans friend and you better leave us alone or Hit man will come and find you and open a six can of whoop ass on you!" Of course I don't say that, but the thought is there.
Hit mans friend delivers us safely to our hostel and I'm so grateful as we would of never found it. Only problem is the hostel is full! So is the one next door! Great! It's hot, we haven't eaten nearly all day and we are lost in a maze! Luckily one of the hostels takes pity on us and finds us a room in its sister branch. We are then guided through more shit and cow filled alleys to our simple but pleasant hostel with a scarf wearing owner who says
"If God pleases" at the end of most sentences. I liked him very much.

To find our way round Varanasi me and Lauren have to use markers. This can be anything from a shop sign to a pile of cow shit! The next morning I have my biggest test yet! I have to get to and from, the train station, to get tickets. I'm was doing it solo as well, as Lauren wasn't feeling too well. I haven't a clue where I'm going, but I start walking and memorising as much as possible. Luckily I see a porter with a Japanese family carrying their bags. "They must be heading for the Main Street" I tell myself. I hit the Main Street. It's a mass of chaos and energy. I strike a deal with a cycle rickshaw to take me there and back.
The legend that is my Nana Lil, use to live in Singapore many moons ago. She has many a great story from those days. When I travelled there a few years ago, I came back and told her all about it. She seemed sadly disappointed with my tales of skyscrapers and a clean and highly modern place.
"Would you not like to go back and visit? I asked her.
"Oh no!" She replied. "I wouldn't like it. I preferred it more, when it was dirty and gritty, with brothels and opium dens! It was much more exciting and real."
I always thought about what Lil had said after that, but it was only now sat high on a cycle rickshaw being drove through the masses in Varanasi, that I finally understood what she meant. I had never felt so alive. Around me were crowds; animals; men pushing carts laden with rice; chickens in cages; food vendors; and street kids running around playing games. It was life at its most simplest; gritty; and energetic form. If time travel was possible this is what it would be like, for Varanasi is like going back in time. There is nowhere like it on earth, that I have ever been. I sat for the rest of the journey totally absorbed in this world around me.

Later that day, after Lauren was feeling better, we found are way down to the river; to the sacred Ganges. Varanasi is one of the worlds oldest continually inhabited cities and is regarded as one of Hinduism's seven holy cities. Pilgrims from all over India come to the ghats lining the River Ganges to wash away a life time of sin. The Ganges is also one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Downstream of Varanasi, the Ganges is a black septic river with 3000 times the acceptable limit of faecal coliform bacteria. It's hard to watch people submerging themselves and drinking this water, with such faith and devotion, when you know that it is probably going to make them ill, or even kill some of them, but this is India and their religion. They would not believe you if you told them anyway.

People also come to Varanasi to die, since expiring here offers moksha (liberation from the cycle of birth and death). Death is everywhere in Varanasi and I mean everywhere. It is the Hindu tradition to cremate bodies and this is done in public at the burning ghats at the side of the river. They first douse the body in the Ganges then cremate it in huge piles of wood. Me and Lauren sat and watched the burnings. It was a weird feeling. Fascinating and morbid at the same time. You could smell the burning flesh; dogs scavenged for food among the rumble; the doms (the handlers of the dead bodies) where covered in dirt and smoke; and the touts tried to swindle money from tourists and mourners as the bodies burned in the back ground. It felt medieval, like this scene before me had not changed in centuries. It was life at its grittiest.

That evening we hired a boatman to row us along the river at sunset. We watched from a far the ever burning fires of the dead; and the ancient fire and dance ceremony of the Ganga aarti. The Hindus light candles surrounded by flowers and place them on the river. They are prayers for the dead; or requests to the Gods for a good husband or a healthy child. Lauren's great Aunt had died a couple of days before, so lit one in Pray to her. And me? I lit one too, and asked the Gods for something, but I will not tell you what for. It's my secret.

We stayed a couple of days in Varanasi, but we could of stayed there forever. Me and Lauren agreed it was one of our favourite places in India. It's one of the most unrelenting; chaotic; and unapologetic places on earth, but it is also one of the most blinding and absorbing places too, even with the shit, but isn't most of life full of shit anyway?
Next stop Kolkata.