Today I went to the station and, after waiting 30 minutes because the train was late, set off for Sarnath, located northeast of Varanasi, which is an important Buddhist site where Lord Buddha first taught the Dharma and where I could see the Buddha Temple and the Dhamek Stupa.
On the way back, I caught a train to Varanasi straight away, I had some funny moments on the train with some Indians who were all bundled up in coats, jumpers and some caps and I asked them if they were going to the snow, since I was in a t-shirt and boiling hot. That was enough to make them laugh and start asking a thousand and one questions. The little ones telling the adults to ask, others using Google Translate, it made me laugh and got me through the trip.
I went to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, which is one of the most famous temples and is dedicated to Lord Shiva. It has a golden tower made with 800 kg of gold.
On the Ghats there are the Hindu ascetics who rejected material life to seek enlightenment and closeness to the divine, they live a nomadic, detached life and there are also the Naga babas, who live naked and covered in ashes. They live on the street and on donations.
They, children and pregnant women, because they’re believed to be closer to the divine, when they die see their bodies thrown straight into the river, tied to stones, but not cremated.
Today I saw people carrying the deceased on stretchers through the middle of the city, singing as they went, to Manikarnika Ghat, where the cremation ritual takes place, which begins with the family going to buy firewood right next to it and carrying it to the cremation site.
The body is first dipped in the river, left to drip for half an hour and then burned on a wooden pyre for 3 hours, and the bones are then thrown into the river.
At that moment, a pot is used to collect water from the river and they return to the pyre where the body burned and, with their backs to it, with the pot of water on their shoulder, they throw it onto the pyre and cannot look back again, so that the spirit rises straight to heaven. This ritual is performed every day of the year, 24 hours a day.
Today is also the day of the Basant Panchami festival, which celebrates the start of spring, dedicated to Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, music and the arts.
I went to watch the Ganga Aarti ceremony in honour of the river Ganges, this time at Ahilyabai Ghat. In the evening I went to dinner at Café Mona Lisa and finished the night on the terrace of my hostel.