We have only today in Varanasi, a city that I’ve long been fascinated with. Although I’m not very spiritual myself, I’ve always been interested in what draws people here. Most of what I’ve seen in the past revolves around the ghats along the Ganges River. Unfortunately, with the river in flood, that spectacle was unavailable to us. What we have found is that there are a multitude of other temples here and we went to see a few this morning.
The first was at the Benares University campus. This university was established in 1916 and now houses about 20,000 full time students and some of the region’s leading hospitals. As a government university, it is very cheap (around $100) per year, but places are very competitive, so only the brightest make it in. The temple is very impressive, but being a Hindu Temple no photos are allowed inside.
Speaking of ‘no photos’ the next temple we visited was The Monkey Temple. It’s most impressive feature is the population of monkeys that live on the grounds, including some very young baby monkeys. They are well fed, with bananas and nuts spread around the temple. I don’t remember the name of the next temple, but I do remember watching Morgan Freeman visit for a series he did on god. Apparently, there are fish in the pond, but I suspect it would take divine intervention to find anything alive in there. (Note the green colour!)
We also visited the unremarkable ‘Mother of India Temple’ which was well … unremarkable. It does has a carved map of India in the floor tiles which only served to remind me of Game of Thrones and the wall. Sensing that we were a little underwhelmed, our guide took us to a silk factory and outlet store. We quite liked this one, because they did actually seem to run looms on-site. Everywhere we have been so far, they tell us ‘XXX’ is the centre of silk production and I must admit being skeptical because I had not yet seen one mulberry tree. As it turns out, the silk is sourced from elsewhere, mainly around Bangalore. I did get a shirt made and Deb walked out with a couple of scarves.
We then went to one of the better hotels for lunch before heading to the Ramnagar Fort. This was an opulent residence for the local Maharaja, but has fallen into disrepair and has since been donated to the state government. It does have an amazing collection of horse-drawn carriages, old cars (including a Cadillac and a Plymouth), a collection of 19th century guns (including a 4 barrel pistol) and a collection of knives and swords, many with jewel encrusted handles. Once again, no photos allowed, so a picture of the rundown buildings will have to suffice.
There last thing left for us to do was to see if we could find anyone bathing in the Ganges. Due to the high river levels, it was unlikely, but we went down to the river side anyway to check. The monsoon rains probably put the river at it’s cleanest in a while.
My final thoughts on Varanasi are that while it isn’t that far from one place to another, it usually takes a long time. Sealed roads are an exception to the rule and the volume of traffic and the modes of transport make for a city bulging at the seams. Add to that, the water sitting around from the recent rain, mixed with animal and food waste. This only serves to attract more pigs, cows and dogs, thus giving Varanasi an ambience all of it’s own.
I also think that not much has really changed here, except for the brand names. People seem to be doing what they’ve done for centuries. In saying that, about a third of all advertising here is education related, backing up that very Indian adage that ‘education is the way to a better life’.
Tomorrow is a big travelling day as we drive to Agra… so probably a short blog tomorrow.
Until tomorrow!
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