HOLY CITY ON THE GANGES

Our two night stay in Vanarasi was punctuated by both an evening and a morning boat trip on the Ganges to observe various religious rituals being performed by the faithful on the banks and in the river of this most sacred of places for Indian Hindus.

We also spent a morning touring the Deer Park in Sarnath where Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha, preached his first sermon, thus initiating the practice of Buddhism as a religious alternative to Hinduism.

The Deer Park is focused on an ancient stupa marking the historic event itself, another fairly recent structure wherein wall paintings recount the history of the Buddha himself, an offshoot of the tree under which he is said to have attained enlightenment and an international array of commemorative plaques honoring all that has occurred here over the centuries. The archeological remnants of earlier structures are everywhere as well. There’s a small but significant archeological museum, too.

The Park draws pilgrims from all over the Buddhist world: while we were there, for example, we encountered a large group from Thailand; at our hotel, a contingent from Malaysia turned up; there were Japanese around, too, creating quite an international visitor scene overall.

However, what draws the majority of visitors clearly are the numerous ghats along the Ganges where Hindu pilgrims perform group prayers in the evening and individual ablutions every morning. We observed the evening prayers (as noisily performed by seven Hindu priests) from a wooden boat just offshore; then returned the following morning to watch, again from a boat out on the river, various rituals being conducted up and down the steeply stepped riverbank by individuals or small groups of devotees.

On both occasions we also watched cremations being undertaken at two neighboring ghats where, day after day and well into the night, over a twenty-four hour period, bodies are burned on wooden funeral pyres.

Although not as many as we might have expected were present at either the evening or the morning rituals, the scenes we witnessed were still quite interesting and inspiring.

So, too, were the wild rickshaw rides to and from the evening prayers and the morning walk back to the bus through the warren of alleyways and twisting streets making up the oldest quarter of the city (known as Kashi to the locals).

Of course, we also visited (and shopped at) one of the workshops turning out the brocaded silks for which Varanasi is internationally known – so, not everyone will be receiving dung incense sticks for Christmas this year, it would appear …