Varanasi

After saying goodbye to my students at our guesthosue in Majnu Ka Tilla, Delhi (they would be leaving several hours later), Tashi dropped me off at the Delhi rail station. My train wasn't posted at any platform and five minutes before it was scheduled to leave a crowd of people helped me cut to the front of the enquiry line, where I was told that it was leaving from the Old Delhi station, not New Delhi. I ran to the metro, rode it two stops to the correct station and missed my train. So this was how my adventure would begin. I had to pay a bribe to get on another train, in a much less comfortable car, but was glad to be heading to my destination and the bribe cost less than it would have to go back to a guest house for another night in Delhi. Despite soldiers with huge rifles crowding into the car in the middle of the night and shouting freely to each other for several hours, I was able to sleep on the top platform six inches away from the fans blowing from the ceiling. After fourteen hours on the Varanasi Special, at around 10:30 the morning of the 14th, I arrived in one of the oldest cities in the world and a holy place for Hindus and Buddhists. The Ganges runs through Varanasi, and a lot of Hindus like to cremate and dispose of their dead at its banks. We witnessed this in Rishekesh way up river, but in Varanasi this is happening all the time. Also their are many sacred Hindu temples here, which one will accidentally run into while wandering through the city's many narrow, winding alleys. There are lots of hippies here, and a whole lot of music ashrams where people learn to play Indian instruments, situated in alleys by the ghats just off the river. Here there are Indians whispering about hash and marijuana on every corner. Last night I stayed way off the river because I'd booked a place in a more residential section closer to the station for one night. But tonight I'll move to Sarnath, where the Buddha gave his first sermon, to stay with Tashi's brother the monk until I leave.

There is smoke from cremations blowing off the river. There are men performing ablutions in the shallow waters near its banks. There are wild dogs, long-eared sheep and black cows roaming through the narrow alleys. As soon as an alley abruptly opens into a main road, five cycle rickshaw peddlers approach me and offer rides but I keep wandering through fruit and vegetable sellers spread out on the sidewalks, near-naked men and young children sleeping just beside the road, roasting in the sun. I think of the street kids in Delhi clawing at the window of our cars or reaching into the motor rickshaws at traffic signals, and how they made me think about my nephews of the same age. Two girls of about seven chase me for fifty meters asking for rupees and laughing. One of them bites my hand just before I jump into an auto rickshaw. The driver takes me to Banaras (Varanasi) Hindu University, one of the three largest residential universities in the world because I want to see what the campus looks like, and be inspired by academia. Later at my guest house, inspired, I drink my first beer in four months, a Kingfisher, with two orders of french fries, chicken curry and plain rice. The waiter asked if I wanted it spicy or non-spicy, and I knew I definitely didn't want it non-spicy. So I ordered, the result being the spiciest, most painful, water-makes-it-worse, hotter-than-hell thing that's ever passed through my lips. I slept until 10am, slowly got up and rode back down to the ghats. Maybe today I'll take a boat ride in the 105 degree sun, and then I'll go to Konchok Rigzen's to more familiar Buddhist country.


There won't be photos for awhile. While tending to a student who had just fainted in Delhi, a crowd of people formed and one of them jacked my camera. Lightens my load and forces me to write more.