Holy Shit!...and Cities

For our last stops in India we went to two very different holy cities. The first was Varanassi, the holy city of the Ganges. Hindus are expected to make a pilgrimage here at least once in their lives as to them the river is a living god. The other city was Bodhgaya. The MOST important pilgrimage site for Buddhists. Here is where the prince Siddhartha found enlightenment under the bodhi tree and became the Buddha (or the enlightened one).

Varanassi was very beautiful, but absolutely disgusting at the same time. As soon as you leave the train you are assaulted by taxi wallahs, and rickshaw drivers to go with them to a "good hotel" "very cheap". The setting of the town along the Ganges lined with 80 ghats, or spiritual temples along the river. However, under the surface are two big problems, pollution and the never ending Indian torture of listening to touts hound you every step with:

Boat

Rickshaw

Massage

Haircut

One Ruppee

Postcard

Smoke, Smoke, Hash

Take a look

Nice Price for you

Want to see temple

Just to name a few...

We did go on a very nice boat ride down the Ganges at sunrise. We did not see any of the body burning ghats, or any dead people in the water. We did see plenty of Indians and a few westerners swimming in the toxic cesspool...I mean water of the river.

The highlight was meeting a fantastic Spanish couple, Milena and Danny. We really enjoyed their company, and we were able to keep a conversation in Spanish, so I guess we aren't as rusty as we thought.

Bodhgaya is very nice and much smaller city. It is very interesting because this is the homeland of Buddha and it is crawling with Buddhists from other countries. In fact, if you want to see what Buddhism looks like in other countries, you can do a tour of all the temples here, pretty cool. We stayed in the monastery of Butan. It was wonderfully quiet, devoid of touts and very simple. We just had two plain beds in our minimalistic room but it was still lovely. Especially after the hoopla of Varanassi.