The Holy City of Varanasi

Day 13 (1/13)

We slept in a bit today and made it up to the rooftop just in time for the breakfast buffet that was included with our room, and our first view of Varanasi in the daylight! It was beautiful…lots of monkeys playing on the rooftops that surrounded us and… SUNSHINE! It has been much colder than we had imagined so far and it felt nice to peel off some layers and soak up some vitamin D. After breakfast we decided to seek out our other options for places to stay on the internet in the lobby while we were checking out. After some research we decided to just transfer to the ShivaKashi Guest House that was offered to us the night before. As soon as we let the desk manager know he had a young boy…maybe 15 or16…carry my bag and we were told to follow him and he would take us to the guesthouse. I thought my bag looked big on me…it looked giant on this skinny little Indian boy and I was amazed at his strength and ability to maneuver through the narrow alleys around all the people and cows and bikes…to me it felt like a labyrinth and I began to wonder how I would ever find my way around much less back to the guesthouse once I had left it! I never saw any street signs although I know they all had names. Painted on all of the walls surrounding us were names of different places…guesthouses, restaurants, shops…with arrows pointing in what direction you could find that particular place. Even though it felt a little overwhelming, with each step the feel of Varanasi grew on me, my smile began to widen, and I began to feel this anxiousness to wonder around and explore this new world that seemed to be tucked away in a secret place. When we arrived to ShivaKashi's we were kindly greeted  by the manager Sanju, he was this adorable little Indian man dressed western style with slacks and a button down shirt with a black leather jacket, smoking a cigarette. He was very nice and helpful, talkative, and I could tell right away we would get along great, we were both storytellers:) He gave us clean towels, our key, and showed us to our room which was up many many stairs that got steeper the higher you went. We were on the top floor, right next to the kitchen and right below the rooftop restaurant. We decided to relax a bit up on the rooftop and just enjoy the surroundings over some tea and coffee. The rooftop was enclosed with a fence like structure to keep the monkeys out and as we began to look around we saw a lot of other people up on their rooftops flying kites. Turns out it was the weekend of  Kite Festival! An annual celebration where pretty much everyone in the city hangs out all day flying kites! Sanju said today was a day for practice and that tomorrow was the big day and it would continue until sunset. It was so crazy to see that many kites flying in the sky all at the same time, it was really quite magical. It was also really neat to be able to just sit and watch all the people hanging out with their friends and loved ones. There was some really loud music playing that you could probably hear throughout the town and people were dancing, and laughing, it seemed like there wasn't a single person without a big smile on their face.

Everyone practicing for Kite Festival!

views from our rooftop restaurant

life in Varanasi

 I think we ended up hanging out up there for a couple of hours and then decided to venture out and see if we could find our way to the ghat and check out the view from down below. Before we left Sanju gave us each a business card, I think he must be used to people leaving and not being able to find their way back! We both smiled and said thank you, I can only speak for myself, but I think we both thought that Sanju must have read both of our minds! We had also noticed that they had laundry service for very cheap, so we ran up and grabbed all of our dirty clothes so we could have them back by the evening of the next day. As we left we were sure to take a good look around at different landmarks and signs that would help us remember how to get back, but after some time of walking it became pretty apparent that we were going to have a challenge on our hands later, but that was okay with me. I sort of thought of it as a test. Good practice for building my awareness and being able to find my way around. Soon, I would be doing this all on my own. We soon found ourselves out at the main road…the craziness…a much bigger bazaar with beautiful arrangements of fruits and vegetables, freshly roasted nuts, delicious smelling street food, and shops galore! I actually bought a new jacket…and even haggled the price down!

 We walked quite a ways down, toward an even busier intersection where there was a church. The man who had walked us to the first guesthouse had told me that this church was the oldest Christian church in the area…I thought I had taken a picture of it but I guess I didn't:( It was yellow and white, very simple. Considering this was a holy city I decided to go in and see if they had any rosaries for sale…my strong and beautiful Grandmother collects them and I wanted to get one for her from India. (Hi Grandma! I miss you and love you XOXO) As we entered the gate I noticed a few Indian women sitting and standing around a bench that was outside of the church and an Indian woman was washing the steps that led into the church. I said "Namaste", and took off my shoes. I tried to ask about the rosary but no one understood, so I thought I would just go inside to see if there was someone that understood English. I took two steps towards the entrance of the church and the woman washing the stairs began to yell at me in Hindi, practically chasing me down off the stairs! All the other women were just staring at me and caused an uncomfortable feeling I was having trouble understanding. Isn't a church a place of love and acceptance? I'm sure I was just disrupting her cleaning duties before service or some sort of ceremony that I was unaware of but I feel like, even without words, there are so many ways you can communicate (like with your hands as my Italian family would know!). I put my shoes back on, feeling very unwelcome, and we left. We headed back down the busy bazaar on the other side finding our way back to the orange ATM sign that would lead us back into the maze of alleyways and hopefully fairly quickly to the ghat. Once we found the river we just walked around, the ghat is great for people watching, which I love to do! After some wondering around the ghats the sun was beginning to set at this time so we decided to take a boat ride along the Ganges, which was no challenge at all considering there are many many men along the ghats offering boat rides! So we jumped on a little row boat after we agreed on a fair price for one hour. Luckily our boat "rower" knew pretty good english and was pretty informative as far as the happenings around that ghat which was a bonus. As we were floating along this tiny little boat approached selling the little flower baskets to offer to Mother Ganga so we bought 2 and the boat man helped us light them telling us to say the names of our loved ones to send them good health and a long and happy life. We did, and it was probably the most ceremonious attempt we had so far! Neither of the baskets toppled over and we finally got to watch our prayers floating down the big and powerful Ganga. He took us down to the burning ghats and explained a little bit about the process and ceremony, we also got to see the Ganga Aarti from the river which was really cool~ a whole new perspective compared to the Aarti's we had been to in the last 2 cities:) This ceremony was much bigger and was very mesmerizing to watch and listen to, receiving all the beautiful vibrations.

boat ride on the Ganges~sending prayers to all my loved ones:)

river view of Ganga Aarti

After our hour long cruise had come to an end we were hungry and set off in search of the Lotus Cafe that Brenden had found in his book, known to cater to tourist with fresh salads washed in mineral water! Hooray! I was so excited to get some fresh, crisp, whole foods in my body:) Not that I hadn't been enjoying all the amazing food so far, I had just really been missing my salads! We found the place pretty easily and it was super chill. With a view of the river we had the option of sitting on the ground on cushions at low tables, which of course I choose! The food was excellent as was the service. I had a delicious tuna salad with a bunch of fresh veggies, ginger carrot soup that was amazing, and honey mint tea that felt very soothing to by body. With perfectly full tummies we headed back to our guesthouse and surprisingly didn't really have too much trouble finding our way back "home".

Lotus Lounge

I have many more pics but they are loading very slowly...I will probably start limiting the photos so I can share the story:)