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Sleepy tourists follow singing pilgrims on the road to the Ganga. At this wee hour, a handful of pilgrims and vendors keep alive this road, which was a river of cycle rickshaws yesterday evening. The motley crowd takes a detour at one of the entrances to the Vishwanatha temple, the famed destination in Kashi aka Varanasi aka Banaras. Their bhajans will wake up the deity, Shiva. Then they will visit the nearby Sakshi Vinayak temple, where Ganesha keeps an attendance register for the devotees of his father.
Boundless faith, timeless city
Don Sebastian2007-03-08 19:46:02
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Sleepy tourists follow singing pilgrims on the road to the Ganga. At this wee hour, a handful of pilgrims and vendors keep alive this road, which was a river of cycle rickshaws yesterday evening. The motley crowd takes a detour at one of the entrances to the Vishwanatha temple, the famed destination in Kashi aka Varanasi aka Banaras. Their bhajans will wake up the deity, Shiva. Then they will visit the nearby Sakshi Vinayak temple, where Ganesha keeps an attendance register for the devotees of his father.
Farther down the street, priests and boatmen wait for more pilgrims and tourists at Dasaswamedha ghat. Beyond them the legendary Ganga flows in the darkness. Bathing ghats or stepped embankments are already crowded. Sages and sinners compete each other for a spot amid the moored boats. A dip in the river from the Himalayas would purify them. The heavenly river was brought to earth by the penance of three generations of kings to wash away their ancestors' sins. Ganga owes its mythical origin to King Bhageeratha and his father and grandfather.
As a group of foreigners follow their tour operator onto a waiting boat, a frail boatman in many layers of clothes
finds his first customer in me. He offers to show me all the ghats in Varanasi and tell the stories attached to it. As we fix the price, he beckons a boy, who rowed a boat to the ghats. Lallu Boatwalle has 40 such boats on the ghats, the oarsman says. Oarsmen could hire it after finding a customer. Half the earnings go to the owner. I ask the oarsman's name. He says it's not important. Always ask the boat owner's name.
Sampath has come to Varanasi from Ghazipur. His father too had been rowing boats in the Ganga. The experienced tourist guide mixes the tales of the ghats with his own. "Oarsmen of Varanasi know many things about the place. You ask anyone about us. We take whatever you give us. But half of it goes to the boat owner," he repeats. It is a tough job, especially in the
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See photographs from:
India Gallery
