One of the holiest cities in India, Varanasi (also known as Benares or Kashi) is located in the state of Uttar Pradesh along the banks of the Ganges river. It is thought that the name was derived from the Varuna and Assi rivers that flow into the Ganges near the city. Being a holy city, it receives more then 1,000,000 pilgrims every year. Hindus come to bathe in the Ganges believing that the water has the power to wash their sins away. It is believed that dying in the city will release a person's soul from the endless cycle of birth and rebirth. It is also a big attraction for foreign tourists wanting to get a glimpse of Hindu beliefs and rituals, or even to study Hinduism themselves. Many families bring the bodies of their recently deceased relatives to be burned in the ghats next to the Ganges.

Some Indians claim that it is one of the oldest inhabited city in the world (founded around 3,000 B.C.), but Aleppo and Damascus in Syria are at least 1,000 years older (founded around 4,300 B.C.). Still, it's amazing to be walking through a city that has been continuously inhabited for this long (5,000 years!). Mark Twain once mentioned Varanasi in his writing "Benares is older than history, older then tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together"

I won't write that much about it here, Wikipedia has a nice page about Varanasi here if you'd like to read more

Sunrise on the Ganges

Life in the ghats along the Ganges

Statue of the goddess Kali. Notice the characteristic stuck-out red tongue and the necklace made from severed human heads.

(I will soon write a lot more about her on my page about Kolkata (Calcutta), named after the goddess.)

Cow resting in the middle of a busy street

Small street in the city

Varanasi (along with certain other parts of India & Nepal) is a hippie paradise, as such, there is no shortage of drugs. Walking along the Ganges one morning, a man tried to sell me some hashish (advertised as being "good shit"). I politely declined and jokingly asked him if I could take a photo, to my surprise he agreed as long as his face was not visible. Often these guys work together with the police, right after buying it the police will approach the buyer and find the drugs, they then threaten to arrest them but settle on a large bribe. Foreigners regularly fall for this scam. Here is his merchandise:

More photos from the ghats

Every night there is a Hindu blessing ceremony performed along the river, here are some photos of it

Various other photos

This woman was brushing her teeth with a stick

Saddhus (Holy men)

Barber working along the river bank

Clothes are washed in the river, then laid out on the banks to dry

Other barbers with and their customers

Man singing in the morning

Rainy morning photos from my last day in the city

Because the city is considered to be very holy, many people bring the bodies of their deceased relatives to be burned at one of the funeral ghats along the Ganges. The ghats operate 24 hours a day, consuming massive amounts of wood that has to be brought in from very remote locations in some cases. There are many different kinds of wood, drastically ranging in price. The men working there are experts, knowing exactly how much wood and ghee (clarified butter) to use in order to completely burn a human body. The body is first brought by relatives to the Ganges and is ceremonially washed before being wrapped in funerary sheets and placed on the wooden pyre. For an average adult the whole process takes about 4 hours. Photography in the funerary ghats is strictly prohibited, I was able to take some photos from a rooftop of a nearby building

Stockpiles of wood used for the burning

These are the funerary ghats

Body laying down near one of the wood pyres waiting to be burned

The remains of one of the pyres, at this point only a few bones are left

Another body being taken to the river to be cleansed

A funerary pyre being ignited, the body is wrapped in a sheet at this point

Ram Nagar Fort