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I flew from Port Blair to Calcutta, thus ending 8 and a half months of solid over-landing. Arrival was a bit of a shock at first - after the peace of the Andamans, the chaos of Sudder Street was overwhelming. With my flight home booked for 17 days, I had no intention of hanging around Calcutta, and had bought my train ticket to Varanasi already, set to leave that night. So, I dropped my camera in to be repaired, and spent the day in the parks watching, trying, and failing to understand cricket. I guess after 6 months in Pakistan and India, there's no hope for this Irishman. The guy did a real DIY job on the camera, somehow managing to fix it with a shirt button and pin. And then I was off to Varanasi.

Last hurrah in the city of the dead

Conor Meleady
2006-08-21 18:49:12

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I flew from Port Blair to Calcutta, thus ending 8 and a half months of solid over-landing. Arrival was a bit of a shock at first - after the peace of the Andamans, the chaos of Sudder Street was overwhelming. With my flight home booked for 17 days, I had no intention of hanging around Calcutta, and had bought my train ticket to Varanasi already, set to leave that night. So, I dropped my camera in to be repaired, and spent the day in the parks watching, trying, and failing to understand cricket. I guess after 6 months in Pakistan and India, there's no hope for this Irishman. The guy did a real DIY job on the camera, somehow managing to fix it with a shirt button and pin. And then I was off to Varanasi.

Varanasi is the holiest city in all of Hinduism, a place where the aged come to die, and be released from the cycle of rebirth. It also has a reputation amongst travellers as being the craziest place in India, a place where weirdos, con artists, pick-pockets, drug dealers, and even flesh-eating babas gather to take advantage of the tourist parade. The Lonely Varanasi's full of 'em!Planet dedicates one full column to its' 'Dangers and Anoyances' section on the city.

All of which is quite unnessesary. I found the city to be a fascinating place, a freak-show of a sort, yes, but still a place where the past is touchable, and traditions that have remained unchanged for hundreds if not thousnads of years, continue to thrive. The most infamous tales related by travellers involve the famous cremations that take place along the banks of the Ganges, where the ghats lead down to the river. Tourists are welcome to watch, and, if hustled, urged to donate. The bodies are carried on bamboo stretchers down to the river through the winding narrow lanes of the old town, before being cremated on a pile of snadal-wood, the ashes then being thrown into the river.

Not everyone is cremated. Children under the age of 10 are thrown ...