Rejected by Tuk Tuk Drivers
The people of Varanasi will love to tell you that it is famous for being the oldest living city, that is one which has been continuously inhabited for the longest. On account of this being India and having already heard some fairly tall tales, I decided it wise to try to fact check this. Excavations in the last few years have found evidence of inhabitants from 1800BC and that it hasn’t been vacated since, which definitely places it as really old in my books.
According to a Wikipedia list, which is obviously the current bastion of human knowledge, several cities claim to be the oldest city in the world, though it would appear contentious as to where might actually be the oldest continuously inhabited city.
Balkh in Afghanistan, Byblos in Lebanon, Aleppo and Damascus in Syria, and Jericho in West Bank all claim to be the oldest city in the world and Wikipedia lists them as being continuously inhabited since 1500BC, 5000BC, at least 4300BC, 3000BC and at least 3000BC respectively. Clearly Varanasi sits within this list, but current evidence shows that it’s a few thousand years from being the longest lived-in current city.
Ghats
Varanasi is probably more famed for its ghats, flights of stairs that lead down into the river Ganges. Along with a German called Martin and Rachel, a fellow Brit, I attended a tour of some of these. The guide suggested that his tours usually have many more people and normally there would be a ride on a boat, but due to it being monsoon season there was just three of us and the government had place the river off-limits to boats.
At some of the ghats, bodies are cremated and these are known as burning ghats. Hindus come from all over the globe to have their ashes scattered on, or their bodies dumped in, the Ganges.
One burning ghat was featured on our tour and I must say what a sight it was to behold. Beforehand, I truly wondered what I would make of seeing a burning body, but in truth, it’s not a great deal like I expected. The deceased are covered from head to toe in brightly coloured materials and placed on quite a substantial amount of wood, which is set alight and tendered to by one of the closest relatives. It is his job to make sure the fire keeps burning and must stay with the fire until the cremation is complete several hours later, maybe more if it rains.
You might notice that I said “it is his job” there and this is due to Indian women not being allowed at burning ghats for fears that, our guide informed us, they are more emotional and thus more prone to crying than men and this is a problem because the tears prevent the dead from completing their journey to the mother Ganges.
Early on our tour at a normal ghat, we witnessed a boat going out to the centre of the river where a body was hauled over the deck and made its way to the riverbed. We were informed that the bodies must be weighed down with a weight equal to that of their body to prevent it from floating back to the surface.
Gallery Hunting
The next day, I wanted to find the gallery of a local artist whose works I had seen hanging in the common areas of my hostel. I was given rough directions and decided to stroll down the major road.
After about 45 minutes, I chanced upon a sign to the gallery I wished to visit, which was lucky because I had forgot to take note of the specific details and had managed to forget the name entirely.
I knew that it was near the monkey temple and the sign said it was behind the post office, so I headed away from the main road towards the monkey temple, where I asked some people where I could find the post office.
I found no less than three helpful people who all pointed me in the right direction, however I had already managed to walk around to the other side of the temple before I had chose to ask for directions. The result was that I walked around the large compound which was guarded by walls, barbed wire and monkeys high above me.
After an extremely hot half an hour, I found myself staring at the same sign that I had seen earlier. At a nearby shop, I pointed at the sign and enquired about the gallery. Unfortunately, none of my pointing and acting skills made any difference to our miscommunication and I walked away without aid.
As I did, I spotted the post office across the road in a row set back from the road, almost directly under the sign. Enquiring there lead to getting directions and I bounded off with a fresh hope. Following a path around the back of the post office building led me to some flats, one of which had a sign for the gallery.
A woman’s delightful living room had been turned into a gallery for her daughter. There were lovely paintings of ghats, the architecture of the old city and various Hindu gods.
After looking at the art and deciding that actually, they were all far too big to be carrying around the rest of India, I headed back to the main road in search of a ride back to my hostel, because it was now early afternoon and the sun was increasing in intensity.
I walked over to a tuk tuk and asked him to take me to my hostel, giving the intersection near it as a point I would be happy to get to. After a few minutes of looking at me, quite blankly, he said “no” and went on his way. I was now in new territory: I had yet to be turned down by an auto-rickshaw.
Undeterred, I flagged down an approaching vehicle and repeated my request. The guy looked at me and then beckoned over someone who was selling street food. They talked, I showed my map pointing to where I wanted to go and eventually the driver looked at me, said “no” and drove away.
This process then repeated two more times. By my fifth potential ride, I was losing hope, as well as vital fluids, but after words with the food seller, I boarded and was on my way.
At this point, I wasn’t completely confident that the driver knew where he was going and this was made more evident when he started to pull over and ask passers by for directions. With their help and some pointing of my own, I made it back to the hostel some four hours after I left it, lacking energy, water and artwork.
Mother Temple
After seeing so many temples in Khajuraho I had become a little numb to the idea of visiting any more, but after touring the old city together, Martin suggested we go in search of one. We made our way back to a road and hailed a tuk tuk to Mother Temple, which was listed in a guide book.
From the outside, this temple looked much like a grand house which wouldn’t look out of place on the website of the National Trust. Inside, it was a mostly empty hall with the exception of a giant relief map of India and the surrounding Himalayan mountains. It was truly stunning. We spent time studying it and showing each other our future travel plans for the weeks ahead.