PCV: Paid Caribbean Vacation

I saw some crazy things in my time in India but the strangest of them all was the holiest river in the world. The Ganges River (Ganges is English, Ganga is Hindi) both are the same depending what language is being used. We got there at night to see a few ceremonies of people praying but since our taxi driver screwed us over and took us to pointless silk shops out of the way, we missed sunset. We were none too pleased. We went anyway though and were happy we went. I didn’t get too much out of it besides the general smell of the River. We had to park the car pretty far away from the river because all the alley ways leading to the river were small and I guess the drivers thought it would be easier if we just walked though. Some of the smells were hard to handle and I don’t know if I have ever seen so many cows in all my life, but when we opened up from the small alley way of rabid dogs and homeless people begging on the street, we saw the river.
Black as night, mosquitoes everywhere and small children laughing and playing. It was a land of contrasts. It was past dark and the kids were out with no parents anywhere in sight in some of what I would call one of the dirtiest places I have ever seen. It was dirty and the entire area was full of steps. These are called Ghats. The river is full of them. They are basically steps leading down to the river.
The next morning we were up bright and early to see the river at sunrise. We rented a small boat with this little old man and he rowed us up and down the river. When the sun came up, it was something out of the movies. The pictures we took aren’t real. If someone is in them, they look superimposed and fake. It’s too beautiful for words. Ironic because the word beautiful was one of the last things I expected to think of when I thought of this horribly disgusting river.
I call it all comes down to how disgusting and beautiful are completely relative terms. What I thought was filth and dirt, these people saw as the most sacred and clean place on the earth. A little different than what I expected at first.
Moving on down the river a little further with the sun still rising, we went down the river to the bathing ghats. It was only 6:20am and there were hundreds of people bathing in the river. Now something needs to be explained here. In India, the toilets are far from what we would call sanitary. In most places, toilet paper is a foreign thing. Basically you go in the ground and then use your left hand to wipe. We call it disgusting, they call it culture. For this reason, it is not polite to use your left hand for much of anything. You do not touch people with your left hand or eat with it.
Back to business, we are just going on down the river watching people bathe when right next to them you see little boys pooping in the river at the same time. Just in front of them other boys are learning how to swim. All this is happening simultaneously. It was life. Ganges is the life of the people. Without it they were nothing. It was the beginning of everything and the end of everything at the same time.
The end was probably one of the hardest things to stomach. For Hindus, the only way to die is at the Ganges. It is the most honorable and the only chance of reaching “nirvana.”
The way this is done is cremation. Hundreds of people each day are brought to the river by their families to be given to the gods. People that are impure are cremated. The only people that are not cremated are those that are considered pure. These are children under the age of 12 and pregnant women. Everyone else is impure. While being cremated, it is thought that these people reach nirvana and they can be reborn again. This cremation takes place on the banks of the river right in front of your eyes.
All of those that do not need to be cremated have a different way of going out. They are tied to stones and put in the river to sink. After about 2 weeks, usually the ties let free and the body floats down the river in the way of ultimate cleansing. I was fortunate (if you want to call it that) to see a few bodies floating in the river. Our boat guy didn’t even seem to notice. It was normalized to see a dead body floating down the river.
Right up from the body are people cleaning themselves, swimming, going to the bathroom, and just praying. Everyday people come to the river for a daily cleansing. Life then ends and if you are lucky enough then you get the ultimate cleansing of dying in the Ganges.
What was the Ganges? It was the circle of life. Everything happened here and everything ended here. I may be wrong but I would bet there is no other place on the earth where you can take a breath of fresh air and no that it is far from fresh because it is full of dirt and smoke from human remains, then look down to see a the most beautiful sunrise of your life. At the same time there are children playing, people dying, people praying, people cleaning their clothes, people bathing, children learning to swim, and tourists watching them wandering what they are all doing. In one glance, you could see the entire span of a lifetime at one place. Life and Death. Fun and Despair. It was all there. It was beautiful and disgusting at the same time. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to look at and I could not turn away. It was a drug that kept me coming back because I knew that so many people never lived this way. They had everything they needed on the side of a river. We have everything and it’s never enough.
In water most people wouldn’t be caught dead touching, they were drinking it and bathing in it. There was nothing more holy or clean for them. A land of contrasts.
If there is one regret I have about this trip so far, it’s that I didn’t get in the water. If I ever get back to Varanasi, I am bathing in that river. I touched the water, I looked at it in a bottle, but I never really got in. I was the only person in our group to touch the water but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to be like the people. By thinking the water was disgusting it was like calling their way of life disgusting. They were people too and a hell of a lot happier than we were. Therefore, next time… I’m getting in. I want to be like them. They have something we don’t. I don’t know what it is, but in a place where everything happens, nothing happens. It’s the same cycle over and over. Whether that be coming everyday to bathe, or praying multiple times a day, or coming when you die, it all is a cycle. One big circle continually repeating itself. It’s the circle of life in a place we would have trouble calling a good life. They have been doing the same thing for thousands of years and it hasn’t really changed. They have something figured out that we don’t.
If you go to the Ganges, I recommend getting in the water. It’s the cleanest place on earth.