A boat trip is the best way to see all the ghats along the river, and the see the raw India Meredith was talking about. Ghats are just steps leading down to the river and some have special purposes. The people in Varanasi use the river for everything: they do laundry, they hold pujas or prayer rituals, they cremate bodies at funerals, and they bathe. Varanasi and the river Ganges are holy places for Hindus, so they are supposed to take a ritual bath in the river every morning. Here is a photo I took at one of the many bathing ghats on our sunrise boat tour.
That same evening we went on a second boat tour just after sundown. First we went to the second burning ghat, Harishchandra Ghat, where we saw a funeral in progress. As we arrived they lifted a body onto a funeral pyre, big pile of wood, and performed a ritual that involved pouring oils and flowers on the body. They then stacked more logs on top and said more prayers. The whole ritual was performed by the oldest son the man who died; the son has to shave his head and wear white for 13 days after the funeral. When they were finished, a second group of people lit a pile of logs to the left, which has obviously been prepared before we arrived. It quickly grew into a large fire. We were told it would burn for another three to four hours before the last of the ashes were cooled by pouring Ganges water over them and then thrown in the river. We saw this final part of the funeral later in the evening when we went to the main burning ghat, Manikarnika Ghat. At the second burning ghat there were only the two funerals going on that I described, but at the main burning ghat there were at least 12 going on at one time and there was a queue of bodies waiting to be cremated next.
Between the two burning ghats we stopped for a while at the main ghat, Dashaswamedh Ghat, where they were performing the evening puja. A number of Brahmin priests were doing a ritual with some fire, and there were bells ringing and prayer music playing in the background. The puja itself got a bit repetitive after a few minutes, but it was impressive because of the number of people who came to watch. The river was full of boats, and the ghats above the river were packed with people.
When we got back to our hotel another typically Indian thing happened: there was a cow sleeping outside the entrance to our room. Before my mom came to visit me in India she asked me if there were cows everywhere, and there are, just like you would expect.
We only spent two nights in Varanasi and the only part of Varanasi we really saw was the river Ganges; we also went on two day trips with guides from the hotel to Sarnath and Chunnar Fort. Sarnath is where the Buddha gave his first lecture, and at
Chunnar Fort we got an amazing view over the river Ganges.
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