We woke up bright and early for our sunrise tour of the Ganges, meeting our boat man in the lobby at 6 am. We walked to the river, found his boat, and took off. This time we headed in the opposite direction, south I believe, to see what the other half of the ghats had to offer. There were plenty of other boats out and about, people bathing in the river, and even young hindu children doing yoga in front of the river. The sunrise was beautiful, I probably took 35 of the exact same picture, but one of them will hopefully do it justice. It seemed far less polluted and certainly less buggy in the morning as compared to the night before. After going down a ways and coming back, we thanked our rower and left the boat behind. We decided to walk in the general direction of the cremation part to see it up close and soon we were there. There is a hospice center literally right next to the cremation area so that people who are on their death bed can come and be close to the holy Ganges when they pass away. A gentleman who worked for the hospice place came out and invited us to come close to the fires and take a look. In one we saw people sifting ashes and we were able to distinguish intestines amongst the flames. I believe most of the fires had been going for a while; it takes 24 hours to fully burn a body, and the bodies are covered in wood, so we did not see any full burning individuals. It was still quite a shock to the senses nonetheless, but I’m glad we went. We finished walking through the grounds and headed back to the main street to catch a rickshaw to our hotel. At the hotel we had a fairly western breakfast which was decent and then went down to meet Babalu, our driver from the day before.
On the agenda next was a city tour led by our driver. The first stop was to a Hindu temple situated inside one of the four or so universities of Varanasi. The temple was pretty cool looking, and it was neat to see a working temple where people still actively worship instead of a relic of the past. There was a statue in the center of a snake which apparently represents the Hindu god Shiva. Shiva when alive was said to feed on a mixture of milk and marijuana so that is what they were “feeding” the statue. Drugs are illegal, so in place of marijuana was a different herb, but they placed it on the stone in front of the snake statue, covering it with leaves and beads. They then washed it off with the milk while they and a priest both chanted. It apparently is a ritual that is a part of everyday life, not just a weekly or less occurrence like a Sunday worship would be for Christians.
After the temple we got a delicious mango ice cream bar, or at least I did, bought a gift there for my grandparents, which I can’t specify because ideally they will read this, and left for our next stop. The next thing on the agenda was the monkey temple. One of the lesser Hindu gods is represented by a monkey and this was a temple to worship him. No cameras were allowed in, but there were monkeys EVERYWHERE. They were half ugly, half cute, depends on how you were feeling at the time, but regardless they were awesome. Monkeys fascinate me with how much they move like humans. Their arms and torso for example moves just like ours and it is bizarre to me. There were baby monkeys all over the place too which was eventful and we all wished for our cameras. Jill crouched down to look at one closer and it almost attacked her. She had been telling us non-stop how much she loved monkeys and when she had the opportunity to get embraced by one (or attacked, same thing) she ran away at lightning speed. It was funny but maybe you had to be there. So we walked through the temple which was underwhelming in terms of architecture and stuff, but we were there to see the monkeys. One monkey begged a guy for food which was very strange to see as well. It tugged on the man’s pant leg as if to ask for food. The man gave him food, and the monkey took it before giving him the most disgusted look I have ever seen as if to say “Really? That’s it?” It was pretty much identical to a beggar being unsatisfied with a small gift. We finished up at the monkey temple and got back into Babalu’s car to continue on our way.
It was getting late so we were running out of shopping time but the girls wanted to find some cheap scarves still. We finally found a driver who knew that we didn’t want to go to a company owned store, so he took us to a wholesale place where a man usually sold scarves and sarees to vendors, who then marked them up and sold them to consumers. Scarves ended up being very reasonably priced and everyone bought some. We wanted to find DVDs after, but there was no time so we headed to the airport instead. At the airport we found it pretty easy to check in. I had the print out for the one and only time so I got a boarding pass without hassle, checked in, and waited to board. The power cut off in the airport which was hilarious, I’ve never seen a rolling blackout in an airport, seems like a terrible place to happen. Particularly when they have to do security checks and they have guards with AK-47s walking around. We got on the plane without trouble and the flight went fine all the way to Bombay.
In Bombay we had to get off, get our bags and recheck in. When we asked the ticket counter at the airport about checking in we were told to our horror that we were at the wrong airport. We looked at the time and realized we needed to haul ass if we were going to make it before they closed check in. We hopped in a rickshaw that seemed to know where he was going and ended up at the same airport different terminal. We refused to pay him of course, bailed, and got into a car who took us to the right airport. At this point we had 20 minutes to get our tickets, and I knew it would be a problem. I did NOT have a printout, and my gut told me they would have a hard time finding me. I went to the ticketing counter and the lady couldn’t find me looking up any of my information. She had my passport and everything, but it didn’t matter. I told her to just sell me another ticket, I had to be on the flight, but of course she doesn’t accept credit card and I didn’t have the 3000 rupees that it would require in cash. Finally, 3 minutes before check in finished the guy next to her found me, got me a printout and I had to RUN to the check in counter. His computer was running slow, but I managed to get my ticket. Pretty sure I was close to a heart attack and at this point extremely tired of India, but at least I was on. We made it to Cochin where our driver was waiting for us to take us to our hotel. It was terrible actually, we saw the ship on our drive but we weren’t allowed on because we didn’t have our landing card and immigration was closed by then. We got to the hotel which was in an awesome beach-town type of area, grabbed a very late dinner which was pretty good, and went to bed.
The next morning we woke up quite early, I wanted to be at immigration by the time it opened at 9 am. We got to the ferry that took us to W. Island at about 7:45 and were on the island by 8. We grabbed a rickshaw to customs, where we thought we needed to be, and arrived there at 8:15 or so. Turns out that immigration and customs are different entities, so we were on the wrong end of the island without a ride. We had to walk a kilometer or two to immigration carrying our bags and Tolan’s god forsaken instruments, and needless to say by the time we got there at 8:45 I was pouring sweat. Immigration was very well run; they were ready for us and open early. We got through it in less than 10 minutes and they even let us have a free ride to the ship in a company car. We got onto the ship right at 9 where I left the group behind because I wanted to meet up with people to find some entertainment for the last day. Turns out Tolan got his instruments on with no trouble which was a surprise too. I went to the room hoping to run into someone and found Eric and Jay who were going to leave in about 10 minutes. I took a record speed shower, got dressed in non-sweaty clothes, and we took off for Fort Cochin.
Fort Cochin was the area that our hotel from the night before was on, so I was familiar with how to get there and what to expect. We found the ferry there, a different one than earlier but one that worked nonetheless, and arrived shortly thereafter. The first order of business was to find an ATM. I was down to 16 dollars US and like 4 dollars worth of rupees. Eric took out money and I borrowed from him and Jay for the rest of the day so I wouldn’t have to pay the 5 dollar ATM fee or whatever Bank of America robs me for every time. We got money and hopped in a rickshaw to see some sights. We ended up at the synagogue in town which was like 500 years old but not particularly interesting to see. Others shopped for some overpriced nic naks while I watched in poverty, and we left to grab some lunch. For lunch, my last real Indian meal, I had food which was good as always. I am going to have to find Indian food back home, it’s mandatory. If anyone else is a fan we can make a trip of it. Eric was feeling a bit queezy from his previous evening, I don’t know what would cause that J, so he headed back to the ship. Jay, Lindsay, and I, the three left were left deciding what to do. They wanted to see an elephant training camp that was about an hour and a half away. I was hesitant, worried about being late and getting dock time, but I figured if they were going, it wouldn’t hurt to go too. We set off on our trip to the elephant camp with our new driver Bibal.
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