Ganges water never tasted better

View up from the ghats
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Varanasi is one of the holiest Hindu pilgrimage sites to the holy Ganges river in India. And one of the best places to contemplate the benefits of modern sewerage treatment, which Varanasi does not have. Thousands of people come from all over India to perform puja (ceremonies for blessing or to mark life events) at the river. This involves splashing, mixing paste or flowers into the water, throwing money, dyes, and other sundry things into the river. All the while the river serves, as any good river does, as the bathing, clothes washing, cow washing mecca of the city. The spectacle is as intimate as it is awe inspiring, but makes you think twice about drinking your morning tea, even if it is boiled.

Human figures made from straw, floated out onto the river as part of a ceremony
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After lingering in Darjeeling as long as possible, we flew through Varanasi, arriving in the early morning one day and leaving on the night train the next. We spent most of our time wandering up and down the ghats (river landings) and people watching, although we did take one of the ubiquitous boats at sunrise (puja is typically performed 3x per day, including sunrise and sunset).

This involves splashing, mixing paste or flowers into the water...

Another view up from the ghats
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You will see from the photos that the colors, sounds, lights, humanity, and spirituality were incredible. You will also see that a thick blanket of smog lies between us and everything in our camera’s sight. This is a problem everywhere in India for health, corrosion of buildings and monuments, and, from our point of view, the tourist industry. The sunrise at Varanasi is famous, but now every morning the sun is blurred by the smog (we didn’t even see the sun looking directly at it until it was about half way up). Views in Darjeeling were also muted. Even close-up pictures of buildings in Delhi are fuzzed by fog. Smog coats your clothes and your mucous membranes—blowing my nose was never sootier, and every morning I cough up lovely grey tinged mucous (someone told me that in Hong Kong, where the problem is worse, this is called your "morning oyster"). There is some escape in the smaller towns and hill stations, and even in neighborhoods off the main drags. Still, I’m sure that I’m adding a couple of pack-years to my lung cancer risk. Read in the paper today that this problem has been labeled the "Atmospheric Brown Cloud" or ABC by groups trying to slow it down (used to be "Asian Brown Cloud" but changed due to what I suspect was political correctness).

A look down the river
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Interestingly, after standing above the famous "burning ghats", thick with ash and smoke (to have your corpse burned and then ashes thrown into the Ganges is a particularly holy way to go), I got a nasty bronchitis type cough for a couple of days. As immune to shock as I’d like to think my doctor-self to be, I can’t help but wonder if it was partly psycho-somatic. I’m really glad though that I had the chance to witness (and ingest) such a stunning range of intimate human events.