The city of Shiva

Varanasi is as colourful and charismatic as I expected. And despite the constant hassles, heat, smoke and stench, there is an aura here unlike anywhere else I've been. Spiritual? I’m not sure. But there is a consensual cheerfulness and likeability, a palable joy which rubs off on those around, i.e. me.

The city of Shiva is at its most magical at dawn and dusk. At sunrise the light lights a golden path over the still waters, illuminating the ghats and temples like an Indian Venice. As the sun climbs the ghat steps fill with people beginning their day bathing in the holy water, their yellow and orange blossoms glistening in the golden rays.

Varanassi at Dawn

Truly Magical

The Ganges at daybreak

Pilgrims

Devotee

At night the main ghats glow with gaudy lights which cast rainbow colours onto the dark waters. The stunning evening ceremony of 'ganga aarti'  i watched at Dasawamamedh gnat took my breath away. Hundreds gather every night as the sun sets to worship. The amplification of drums and the ringing of bells is literally earth shattering as the orange clad priests perform the hour long dance ritual amid whirling flames accompanied by chanting, clapping and cheering.

Sunset at Varanassi

Evening crowds gather

Early preparations for the ceremony

Darkness begins to fall

The service begins

Complex rituals

In between dawn and dusk the river is revealed as a murky maelstrom full of human debris and human remains. The smoke from the burning ghats penetrates every sense.
Expiring here offers liberation from the cycle of birth so the dead dominate the river as much as the living. The heat from the flames is intense but the business of stripping the remains for jewellery or even tooth fillings means alongside the high flaming pyres lie water hoses ready to shred heaps of embers for salvage.  As I walk the banks of this holy river bones drift past like white flowers.

Everyone has their own ritual!

The queue for cremation means at times walking beside a line of shrouded corpses, white clad for men, red for women. Family members come forward to carry their own loved ones to the water and light the flame but then disappear for a few hours until returning to the embers. There they are ceremoniously handed bones and a holy man accompanies the closest relative to the waters edge. They wade together into the disgusting mud, hurl the wiped clean limbs as far out as possible and clamber back, their place immediately taken by the next so the shallows lapping the steps are often a sea of bones.

Goats having breakfast

I have learnt to ignore the locals who approach with hundreds of scams, abusing the vulnerability of foreigners sensibility to the Hindu cremation practises to make money. As well as the pilgrims and the dead, the locals and the tourists, are the homeless. They scavenge the banks and haunt my footsteps. There are so many, queueing into the depths of the dark alleys twisting away from the river for free charity suppers.

Me - complete with blessing (check out the forehead)

Time for breakfast now.

I am finding my feet here, physically and emotionally. It is certainly unlike anywhere else, , the beating heart of the Hindu universe, where ancient traditions still dominate life today,  where the intimate private rituals take place in public, a bizarre mix of beyond gruesome and magical beauty.