Day 66 - Touristing in Varanasi!

So today is the much awaited Varanasi day, as one of the most sacred hindu locations in India, everyone's been recommending it to us so this was the objective of Jeremy's last day before heading back to the UK.

Started off with breakfast on the rooftop with Chris who we met the night before...average breakfast, and with Bens new love for Swiggy, he'll take any excuse to pass an order... so there we go, cake and 4 coffees, delivered to the rooftop in 14 minutes . Wild!

So the quickly get out the hotel to make the most of the day quickly turned into a a bit of planning, a bit of washing, more tea, more faff .... its like herding cats with this lot (me included).

Jeremy has sussed us out a weaving village 5 or so kms out of town... we flag down a tuk-tuk, negotiate the price, and head to the drivers mate's house up the road where the driver clarifies the location of where were going with the friend... and then we start heading the complete wrong way out of town. With a bit more total mis-communication, Jeremy jumps in the front and takes over navigating, where we complete 3 sides of a square to get 1km from the weaving village. We'll call that good enough!

We wander along the river, see some boats in the making (pretty cool actually), a bridge that seemed to be based off the template of a tuk-tuk (Ben had to drag one along a bit to help it get unstuck from the barriers) and most importantly, more goats in shirts! Highlight of india so far? Maybe!

So were wandering these little streets, absolutely no sign of any other tourist around, seeming pretty far off the beaten track, but then we come across this room with 6 sari machines, one guy hard at work. This machine looks crazy... Chris is stepping back and wondering how long 3 engineers can look at this work of art and discuss how it works "...this goes there, and that pulls that, and that shifts that...10 minutes later... no hang on, this pulls this, that shifts those... 5 minutes later ...no but look how this moves, that definitely does this and that, and then then the other thing". I won't bore you with any more details. 😅

Tuk-tuk back towards town, where we have to get out once the driver decides where at the so called "pedestrian area"... I dunno, there seams to be a lot of misunderstanding with the tuk-tuks today, so we walk the final 2kms along a crazy busy market area filled with cars and tuk-tuks, to where we actually want to go.

We head to one of the fascinating locations of Varanasi; this area is considered to be one of the most holiest cities in India and many hindus choose to be cremated here... the cremations are happening in in open air, ~20 cremations are happening at any one point, along the banks of the river, decorated bodies are being carried down to the river, washed, and then placed on the wood pile. The fire is then lit ( ormally by the eldest son, with a cleanly shaven head and a white robe) and the family members stand back and quietly watch. I find this absolutely fascinating, particularly the fact that it's public, onlookers are not discouraged in any way, and invite anyone to read up on it more. One of the points I found most interesting is that there was not a single woman anywhere to be seen in the cremation area; I later read that the cremations are meant to be peaceful and not overwhelmed with emotion, and therefore the women typically do not witness the cremations.

From here we went on to watch the ceremony for river god that's performed twice a day. I'm no expert in what's going on, but again, fascinating to see the entire audience getting into it. There's incense, flames, more flames, flowers, a lot of bells, a few drums, what looks like a guy banging a pot lid...and it's India, so obviously there's also just a lot of general noise and colour... love this place!

Final plan for the day it the street food tour, with Tej (guest house host) and Chris. I won't attempt to list all the things we tried, but it was definitely a great couple of hours wandering the streets trying the various bits we'd not yet attempted, (or not known how to tackle...like the little deep fried balls that are filled with water and yogurt and rapidly put on your tiny palm sized plate, that you're expected to rapidly eat before the guy rapidly puts another one on your plate... and this loop continues every ~5 seconds until you remove yourself from the plate loading circle). We had the best lassies of the trip, (which as Tej explained, the best lassies are plain, so you can properly tase the flavour, not butchered with fruit... and then Tej goes on to explain "you know, like a margarita pizza, it only has cheese and chillies, you wouldn't put pineapple on it" 🤣 ) . The saffron moose was banging too...it was all going so well until the little silver pouches that tasted like soap wrapped in leaves, which is more or less what it was, and disguised as "a digestive".

Cool side note on the food... It either came in a bowl made of a leaf, like properly dried and stamped, but still just 100% leaves, or single use non-glazed terracotta bowls, that are then crushed up, washed and reformed into bowls.

Food spend: 24 euros

Tea count: 4