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Around the world in 2000,
via Asia and Madagascar.
Varanasi(India )
Bec2004-09-18 17:40:42
Displayed times (last time: )
Calcutta
I flew in from Yangon on a bright Monday morning after an overnight stopover in Dacca . Calcutta had not changed much since I was here last in 1973, people were still camped out on the sidewalks like these three or four families on Sudder street next to the Indian Museum.
I first stayed at the Calcutta Guesthouse in an alley off Hartford Lane but moved after one night to the cleaner Capital Guesthouse on Chowinghee Lane.
Calcutta still had these hand pulled rickshaw which have been replaced by pedal powered rickshaws everywhere else in India. A sign of modern times...
Countryside
This is the real India. Three quarters of the population still live in small villages like this one glimpsed from the train on the way from Calcutta to Varanasi. Caste discipline has not slackened at all in such places for centuries.
The high caste Brahmin priests, Kshatrya landowners and Baniya merchants live in their own areas close to where the the Sudra or Dalitbahujan (Dalit = suppressed and exploited people, bahujan = majority) castes live but there is less social interaction between them than there was between white Rhodesian farmers and their black laborers a century ago.
Varanasi
Here, one of those pedal powered rickshaws, that I mentioned earlier, is turning from Bansphatak Road into Dasasvamedha Ghat Road in the heart of the holy city that also called Benaras and Kashiji (city of light).
Below on the left, the Sunshine Hotel where I had a fine room for only 4.70$US and on the right one of the many temporary shrines built to honour the goddess of learning Sarasvati on the occasion of her yearly festival.
Of course cows have the right of way on Madanpur Road as everywhere else in India. The bull Nandi was respected as Shiva's mount since early vedic times but cattle were nonetheless killed for the
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See photographs from:
India Gallery
