Varanasi Redeemed

Okay holiest city, you get one more chance. 

That was what I decided when agreeing to go back to the city I once dubbed Varanasti. This time I wasn’t staying in the super expensive, well reviewed, yet horrifically customer service challenged hotel on Assi Ghat and I was going to be gone by the Holi festival. On the ghats of Varanasi it’s better known as the “get drunk and hit each other with a 2x4” festival and not so relaxing for foreign ladies. I had even heard that Modi was working on getting the Ganges cleaned of its usual piles of floating rubbish.

I arrived at my new lodgings puke-matted and dehydrated - off to a good start. At least I arrived; two of my travelling companions ended up screwed over in the grounding of the 737 planes and arrived a day later having had to purchase new tickets. A little Tibetan soup, some mojito and I was ready and raring to go again. Once everyone was together we spent the first bit of the trip catching up, eating, laughing and memorizing the happy hour rules before exploring the city.

5am was our pick up time to see the morning fire rituals on the Ganga. It should have felt like an ungodly hour but I was too hyped up to be tired. We drove around all the huge trucks clogging the city streets (trucks can only go through Varanasi overnight and must be gone by 6am) and down to the ghats in the dark.

Our guide rowed us over the dark water to watch the fire aarti at Assi Ghat and down along all the steps that make up the ghats. It was ancient, alien and beautiful and I wept like a baby. 

We watched men drag large bags of ash from the cremation ghat down to the water’s edge. Bodies shed and returned back to the Mother.

The Kumbh Mela had ended two weeks ago and Varanasi was flush with sadhus or holy men taking in some of the holy city on their ways back from the festival to their mountains. Many were put up in the brilliant orange residence for holy men, aka the Varanasi Home for Wayward Babas, but the overflow were in tents on the ghats or tents on the sandbar in the Ganges. Everywhere holy men prayed, bathed, smoked hash, meditated and roamed naked painting themselves with ash. One charming nude and holy dude turned round and bent over to touch his toes thereby displaying that he was not ash covered EVERYWHERE. I saw a Baba’s butthole!

The rest of the day was spent at Buddhist pilgrimage site Sarnath on a “no hassle tour” from our hotel that turned out to be a no guide, no information tour. G & I tried to recall what we could from previous visits. No one was enlightened, unfortunately.

On one visit to the ghats I was painted, garlanded and chanted over by a pandit who wanted 2,000 rupees ($40 CDN) for his troubles. I resisted the hard sell and only gave him 100 rupees which caused no hard feelings. He blew his conch for me, we took selfies and he gave me his full-colour business card. I suspect we were both pleased with the transaction. 

A lot of the babas had foreigners in their tents smoking weed and seeking wisdom for cash. One baba on a rope swing offered us bhang and a chance to take a photo for an unspecified price tag. Being holy in Varanasi seems like a good business model. Overhead is low, dress is beyond casual and seekers are everywhere. Of course, there are truly devout babas around as well, they are just not the guys trying to drag backpackers under their umbrellas and chanting “2,000 rupees, 2,000 rupees.”

We returned at night to watch the evening Aarti from the river. All the boats were jigsaw puzzled in together while small children hopped boat to boat selling floating flowers and on the main ghats a row of priests hefted huge multi-tiered oil lamps to the four directions. It was a spectacle and, I must admit, the river was much cleaner.

Varanasi has redeemed itself.