WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE SPRING 2014

athing ten feet from another man who's
pissing in the river, all of which is enough
to make you more wary of the Ganges than
you are about strangers calling you 'friend'
and salesmen who offer you their 'best price'.
This is a shame, because the Ganges in Varanasi
isn't the mud-slicked quagmire you
might expect from a river that has had to
struggle its way through thousands of miles
of Indians using it as a moving rubbishdump-cum-sewer;
in fact it's a pleasant deep
blue, and it's only on closer inspection you
see all the rubbish collected on the banks
and the human detritus piled up on the
eastern side.
Closer inspection was what I had in mind on
my penultimate day in Varanasi. I've wanted
to take a walk along the Ganges for some
time, and not just because the Ganges is so
famous; it's surprisingly elusive for such a
long river, and most of the well-known cities
in India have nothing to do with it.
Setting out from my hotel, I walked south
down the west bank to the rickety pontoon
bridge that spans the Ganges during the dry
season. One glance and you can see why it
isn't used in the monsoon; it's got enough
holes and leaks to make it a scary proposition
even if the Ganges dries up. On the other
side of the bridge, over on the east bank,
is the Ram Nagar Fort, and being a sucker
for forts, I made straight for it as the sun began
to get serious.
I fell into conversation with a well-spoken
man called Ram who hailed from Andhra
Pradesh. With his shaved head (apart from a
tuft at the back) and tika mark he was obviously
a Hindu, and he began to explain why
he was in Varanasi.
'I have just committed the bones of my
mother to the Ganges,' he said. 'That is why
I have my head shaved; the eldest son has it
done as a mark of respect.'
I offered my condolences, and asked him if
being buried in the Ganges meant his mother
was now in heaven.
'Yes,' he replied. 'If a person's bones are buried
in the Ganges at Varanasi or Allahabad
then, as long as the bones remain in the river,
that person will be in heaven. And with
bones, they do not float, so he or she will
remain in heaven forever.
'Many American Hindus come here to be
cremated,' he added. 'I suppose they can
easily afford the wood, but I do wonder why
so many western tourists come to Varanasi.
What is the attraction for them? They are
not Hindus, so it can't be for the pilgrimage.'
I didn't tell him that it was probably the
sick attraction of watching people like his
mother burn, and instead waffled on about
the amazing streets of the old city, the serenity
of the Ganges and the multitude of cheap
hotels. The only drawback was the heat, I
said, which is why the number of tourists is
far less in the summer.
The east bank of the Ganges is a false one;
dry, cracked mud stretches for a couple of
hundred metres back from the water's edge,
until it reaches a gradual rise where the vegetation
can survive the monsoon without
being washed out. I spent the first part of
my walk in this scrubland of trees, grass and
severe heat, a beautiful environment that is
a total anathema to anything living.
The sun beat down on my bush hat, pushing
sweat out through my clothes, down the
back of my daypack and into my eyes, and
it wasn't long before I wistfully thought of
Wine Dine & Travel Spring 2014 31