Varanasi - 3/14/1999
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Shortly after we last sent e-mail from Katmandu, I discovered that half my traveler's checks - the ones I had stashed in my backpack - were missing. Mom and I then realized that we had probably been ripped off by the staff of the hotel where we stayed in Cambodia. The details aren't worth getting into, but we lost her new binoculars as well as the traveler's checks. We filed a report at the Katmandu American Express office on Thursday, and they said to check back with them in 24 hours.
Friday morning, our last day in Nepal, we went to the Durbar Squares of Bhaktapur and Patan. We also went to the Tibetan refugee camp, where they weave carpets, and we watched all the steps from making and dyeing the thread through the finished carpets.
Then we returned to the American Express office, where they said there was no response on our claim yet. They told us to see the office in Varanasi (India) the next day.
We flew to Varanasi at 3:00 Friday afternoon, and were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves in seats 1A and 1C. We also ran into our friend Judy (whom we met at Tiger Tops) on that flight. She was returning from a meeting in Bangkok to reunite with her traveling companion Maggie in Varanasi.
At the Varanasi airport, I got my first taste of the Indian approach to things. The lines for immigration were total chaos, and you had to push back through the crowd after getting your visa stamped. It was as if nobody had ever given a moment's thought to how to organize things, and baggage claim was even worse - a dense crowd of men fighting to reach the single conveyor, from which suitcases were pouring off the end into a pile that couldn't be seen from more than a few feet away because of the crowd. After a few minutes of politely trying to maneuver through the crowd and being pushed around by dark little men in mustaches, I figured out how to proceed. You have to be a rude self-centered SOB, and I was, pushing guys out of the way and then carrying our bags over my head back through the crowd to where Mom was waiting with our carry-on baggage. By the time we made it to the front curb, I was exhausted and annoyed, and we had been in India all of about 20 minutes.
Maggie was waiting with Dada, a taxi driver who accompanied us throughout our stay in Varanasi. Dada has been very helpful. He works for Sita, a worldwide travel agency, and he has been with them since 1981. He has many funny sayings, such as "Varanasi is the city of learning and burning" and "I want you to be 125% satisfied." He knows the city very well, and has taken us to the main attractions plus many places where we were the only tourists in sight.
Saturday morning we rode a boat up and down the Ganges at dawn, and it was everything we expected. We watched the dhobi-wallahs cleaning clothes, people bathing and worshipping the rising sun, and of course the cremations along the shore. Two typical sights: three crows picking chunks of bloody flesh off a cow corpse floating down the river, and a smiling family crowded around the body of a woman laying on a stack of firewood. They pulled the veil from her face, the photographer snapped a shot, then they covered her back up and started the fire.
Later we went to the American Express office, and they claimed to know nothing of our claim and said we must file a report at the Varanasi police station regarding the theft in Cambodia that we had already reported in Nepal. I was starting to get just a little bit angry, but Dada came to our rescue. He drove us to meet with "an influential man who would like to help us."
After parking the car, we walked down dark narrow walkways to meet a man in a Muslim cap who invited us into his office. He sat cross-legged on the floor while Mom and I sat in padded chairs, surrounded by mountains of raw and finished silk, with servants bringing us tea, and he said, "Please explain for me your situation."
I explained everything, and within minutes I was on the phone with a man at the American Express office in Delhi who promptly handled everything and arranged for my replacement traveler's checks to meet us in Agra tomorrow. Before we left, he had also confirmed our train tickets, made us three custom silk shirts, and sold us some saris.
Today we went to Sarnath, heard some great first-hand Dalai Lama stories, spent an hour at a house in a small village (Airhe) where some people had never seen an American in person before, and toured some markets, but I'm out of time, so that's all for now.
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Dada, the driver Maggie secured for our time in Varanasi, was a great find. He was always prompt and cheerful, knowledgeable about the city and its history, and exceptionally honest and trustworthy, as we learned within our first hour in the city.
Dada dropped Maggie and Judy at their hotel first, then drove Mom and me to our destination. When we arrived at the hotel an eager bellhop grabbed our bags right away, and in the chaos while we were getting out of the taxi, I didn't notice that I had left my expensive new camera in the back of Dada's taxi.
We checked in to our room, and a little while later there was a pounding on the door. Mom had told me stories of hotel employees knocking on her door in India to try to sell her things at all hours of the day, so I threw open the door with a stern scowl, ready to firmly say no. Two annoyed looking hotel employees were at the door, including the man who had checked us in at the front desk, and Dada was standing behind them in the hallway, holding my camera. I was stunned, because I hadn't yet noticed the camera was missing.
All three started yelling, and it took a minute to figure out what was going on. Dada had come into the hotel with my camera and wanted to return it to me, but the employees had wanted to take it from him and return it to me themselves. Dada didn't trust them, and insisted on handing the camera to me himself, and the employees were angry at this insult. Dada was a keeper!
Shopping for silk and saris in Varanasi. I was being fitted for a custom silk shirt.
The drive across Varanasi for our sunrise boat ride was an unforgettable experience. Here's what I wrote in my journal about it:
"The pre-dawn streets of the Cantonment area were deserted by Indian standards, but soon we plunged into the dense chaos of the streets near the riverside ghats. Dada, our driver, shifted the Ambassador taxi smoothly while dodging dark lumps on the street and giving us tips on the boat ride ahead. Looking more closely into the darkness, I could see that the lumps – which were much more numerous as we neared the holy Ganges River – were alive. They were people, sleeping right on the street. Many had a blanket or other piece of cloth wrapped around their bodies, but others simply lay on the pavement in saris or cotton trousers while cars, bicycles, cows, and pedestrians weaved around them in the misty darkness."
A boat ride on the Ganges is the quintessential Varanasi tourist experience. The sunrise scene along the ghats (the tiered stone steps along the bank of the river) has changed little over several thousand years, with Hindus praying, bathing, and participating in a wide variety of rituals, alone or in large groups.
Heading out for our sunrise boat ride on the Ganges
Mom soaking up the sights.
The people cremated along the banks of the Ganges may be reincarnated as birds, so people push bamboo poles into the river to give birds a place to rest on the water.
Souvenir vendors were working the river in rowboats, and when Mom showed interest in one of them, we were suddenly surrounded.
Manikarnika Ghat is a particularly holy cremation ground, and it's believed that the soul of a person cremated here will attain moksha (nirvana) and break the cycle of death and rebirth.
We saw some water buffalos walking down a street, with nobody around who seemed to be with them. Dada asked a nearby man about them, and we learned that these water buffalos walk down to the river every afternoon for a dip in the cool water, and they know the routine well so their owner doesn't need to accompany them every time.
Water buffalos heading down to the Ganges River for a refreshing dip
After we had successfully arranged for my missing traveler's checks to be returned, Dada drove us to a temple and showed me how to give thanks to Shiva for watching over us.
Mom told Dada that she would like to see a typical Indian home in Varanasi, and he arranged for us to visit a friend of his who lived in Airhe, on the northern outskirts of Varanasi. Dada's friend's wife graciously made tea for us, and we talked with them through Dada as our interpreter, because they spoke no English and we spoke no Hindi.
At the time we took this trip I had been reading some book about the history of Buddhism, and one place I wanted to visit was Dhamek Stupa, the site where Buddha gave his first sermon to his five disciples around the 6th century B.C. It's on the short list of pilgrimage sites for Buddhist monks in Southeast Asia, and is located in Sarnath, a suburb on the northeast side of Varanasi.
Dhamek Stupa
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