Varanasi

You don't know India until you arrive in Varanasi and you discover the beautiful, and at the same time, heavy energy of this place. It's the peace inside the chaos, where life and death meet, the place you should not miss if you come to this country.

We felt its strong energy from the very beginning. Like every other Indian city it was chaothic and noisy but somehow we found a good place to sleep, our little oasis. Local people nearby our hostel where extremely friendly and kind, conversations weren't fluent but we somehow managed to have a good connection.

Almost everything you will see in Varanasi walking down the street is connected to religion or to death. It's not a joke: people come here to die...
We spent the most of the time of our 6-day-trip in the city walking nearby the river Ganges, observing the boats, the people, some tourists and, of course, the burning Ghats, the place where dead people are burned 24/7. We also saw Sadhus (you can see one in our first picture), Sadhus are holy people that renounced to our worldly life to dedicate entirely to religion and meditation. They sustain themselves with donations from hindus. At the same time hindus believe that giving money to Sadhus brings good karma.

One of the most magical thing we've experienced in India was the morning ritual in Assi Ghat in front of the river that gathers young and old people. Every morning before dawn (around 5:30am) they welcome the day performing a ritual with different spiritual elements, followed by a live religious music concert, that ends up with a massive yoga/meditation class which includes breathing exercices and laughing therapy. Is there a better way to start the day? You can see how does it look like in our first video.

A job in the hindu culture means that you will be able to sustain your family and yourself but also that luckily, with a lot of effort, you will be able to have some money for the day that they will die and then be burned nearby the holy river Ganges. Hindus believe in karma. If they suffer in their current life it is to pay for negative past deeds from another life, so they fast or pray. Karma in their present life will determine the form in which they will reborn in their next life (human, animal, plant).
To release your soul to be left in peace and free and stop reincarnation Hindus burn their dead bodies nearby holy rivers like river Ganges, the most polluted river in the world with a lenght of 2525km. The body is burned with sandal wood, a very expensive wood than not everyone can afford. The corpses are usually covered by a white cloth and carried by men on foot that bring the corpse on a wood structure full of beautiful traditional clothes and flowers. Women usually do not participate in the ritual because they are seen as too sensitive and weak to see it.
The only people that aren't burned in hinduism, because they are considered pure are 5 different kinds: pregnant women, Sadhus, children, people bitten by a cobra and lepers. These are buried or sunk in the middle of a holy river with a heavy stone.

Not everything was good in Varanasi. Our friend Mandy started feeling sick one of our last days together and when she left and Jona and I moved to the following city, we realised that the three of us where sick. We found out months later that we had a parasite in our stomach!

Last but not least, we were very lucky to meet Fuli, the funniest and kindest Chinese girl that we have ever met. Destiny would bring us together again some weeks later :)

We could write for hours about Varanasi and its special energy and about how different hinduism is from what we know, but we highly encourage you to discover it with your own eyes and experience it by yourself. You will either love it or run away very scared!Read more