Let’s not travel to tick things off lists, or collect half-hearted semi-treasures to be placed in dusty drawers in empty rooms. Rather, we’ll travel to find grounds and rooftops and tiny hidden parks, where we’ll sit and dismiss the passing time, spun in the city’s web, ‘til we’ve surrendered, content to be spent and consumed. I need to feel a place while I’m in it.

Victoria Erickson, Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being

I need to feel a place while I’m in it. I spent more than 4 days (28 November to 03 December 2019) in Varanasi/Benaras precisely to be able to feel it. Benaras is alive all times of the day. It’s a city that never sleeps. Like New York City, but so far from it in every sense. It’s tradition is as old as man. The holy Ganges defines the city and its way of life. People come here for the transcendent, the spiritual. Mark Twain says it all: “Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together.” Varanasi, the holiest of all holy places, is India in excelsis.
People can speak in English and yet, it’s a place that could not be more foreign to me. They burn their dead in public. They take a bath in the polluted river. They offer flowers and candles to the holy river. They chant throughout the day. They even give you full body massage right there at the ghats. India might be a conservative society, but in Benaras men take off their clothes everywhere and women don’t mind their wet saris clinging to their wet bodies.
It’s a place where cannabis is (sort of) legal. They put it in lassis called bhang lassis. Weed is really not my thing. It makes me sick. We had a pot session on the rooftop of the Tibetan temple in Kushinagar (with Dominik and Preetam) and it was a weird experience but not one I would be looking for.

My main purpose here is to visit Sarnath, the place where the Buddha held his first teaching after getting enlightened. It’s a peaceful park and I spent half a day there.
On a Sunday, I found myself lining up with the locals to go to the main Hindu temple. I had flowers and sweets and leaves to offer. They were all trying to get to this really small part of the temple where there seems to be a pot of milk hanging. Then someone smeared something on my forehead. I sat and just meditated in the cacophony of sounds.

How do I feel about Benaras. I find it refreshing that there still exists a place of such sanctity for many people. Where you don’t really see the locals looking at their phones all day. Where the rhythm of life is dictated by the spiritual. I saw an aarti performer make a sign of the cross before the performance. He was obviously new to the event and the leader was giving him instructions throughout. But a sign of the cross for an aarti performer?! People in India are such decent people. They are trustworthy and they never try to take advantage of you — especially the simple folk. I cannot say the same about other places I’ve been to — Cairo comes to mind. People here still have that simplicity and innocence which makes them beautiful. So much poverty though. I look at these people and imagine their lives not changing until their death — not seeing any other part of the world, staying in their little corners of Benaras. Perhaps that’s not such a bad way to live a life.

I stayed in a really good boutique B&B called Safarnama Varanasi near Godowlia junction. The people are wonderful, especially the mute helper. Beautiful human being.