Monkeys should not be given guns

After a whopping 3 hours of sleep, I was up at 3:15am to get on the bus for a plane ride to Varanasi, India with a Semester at Sea trip. After hearing the horror stories associated with Indian airlines, including pilots leaving the cockpit to have drinks in first class, I was a little wary of our flight. However, everything went smoothly and we landed in the very small, run-down airport of Varanasi. We were transferred to our hotel, a mecca in the middle of a somber slum, and prepared for our sight seeing for the day. Our first stop was a “silk factory”. By silk factory, it was a huge warehouse clearly designed for tourists to spend outrageous amounts on very questionable handmade silk products. I refused to fall into the trap and after a few minutes walked outside to walk the streets. Right outside of the factory a small group of children had gathered and were smiling and waving to the foreigners. One of the kids came up to us and asked if Jason was Brad Pitt and I was Angelina Jolie, and if we could give him our autographs. Obviously, we said that we were.

Apparently only two families in the world continue to make silk like this:


One of the children in the group. Is it just me or is she Latika from Slum Dog Millionaire?


After leaving the factory, we made our way to the heart of the city. We were let off and a string of rickshaws were waiting for us. As I’m sure you can imagine, I was not too enthused. Fortunately though these were driven manually so they were a little tamer than the auto-rickshaws. As we set off down the streets of Varanasi, I really began to take in my surroundings. In every available pocket of the street there were mounds of trash, men were urinating on walls in random alleys, and in between each run-down building was a decrepit home made from cardboard and bamboo. Dozens of wild dogs walked the streets, monkeys crawled on the rooftops, and holy cows could be seen in every direction. Shoeless child beggars ran beside our rickshaws begging for money, adult men frantically waved postcards in the air, and old women sat silently on the side of the road with hands out wide and pained expressions. Once we had been let off, we walked the final steps to arrive at the River Ganges. The bank of the river was filled with people from all walks of life awaiting the nightly religious ceremony. Beggars, affluent Indians, foreigners, priests, and many more had come to witness and participate in the famous Hindu ritual. As the sun went down, boats filled the bank of the river and thousands of small candles were lit and released onto the water. The water glowed with candlelight, as six priests arose on platforms to perform the service. A steady beat from a gong began the ceremony, and a small percussive band and a vocalist soon joined in to accompany the worship. It was amazing to witness such a long-standing custom. The River Ganges is holy to Hindus; each morning Hindus bathe themselves in the holy water and thousands travel great distances each year to die there. It was a very powerful sight to see such devotion and reverence.

Rickshaws and crazy man:


It's love:




Ceremony:




Audience:


Cool-looking holy man:


It was night by the time the ceremony ended and as we made our way back to the rickshaws, it was evident that more beggars had come into the streets. Although it is formally illegal in India, the caste system is still ingrained in the culture of the Hindus, and it was blaringly apparent which caste each person belonged to. The lowest caste, the Untouchables, were the ones who filled the streets. They had absolutely nothing to their name; they had minimal clothing and slept directly on the ground. Many of the beggars were missing feet or fingers, or had terrible deformities. We passed a huge slum, with houses ingeniously built from any available material. Even as we got off the rickshaws and onto the bus, the absolute poverty didn’t end. It was everywhere. Street after street you could see people curled up on the dirt on the side of the road or looking through trash. We got back to our five star hotel, and I couldn’t help but feel disgusted that not twenty feet away from the entrance were people living under sticks, while I slept in luxury. We were returning to the same place the next morning and I was dreading to repeat the painful process again.

They lined the streets for hundreds of yards:


Traffic leaving the ceremony:


Annecdote
3/12/2010: I nearly had a heart attack when we first drove up to our hotel and I saw this: