Varanasi is hard to describe, I don't think I will be able to do it justice, but here goes. I arrived In Varanasi after making my way through the backroads of the Madhya Pradesh by way of many bumpy buses and late night trains.

Varanasi is one of the world's oldest cities at 2600 years old. It is also the holiest Hindu city, where thousands of Hindus congregate to bathe in the Ganges to purify themselves. In reality I can't see much pure about the Ganges when I look at it. Many Hindus are cremated in the ghats along the rivers edge and them there ashes, and sometimes body parts, are deposited into the river, and factories up stream dump large amounts of chemical effluent into the river, so you are really bathing in all this as well.

I arrived just before the Shiva Ratri festival which celebrates Shiva's marriage to another Hindu god who's name escapes me at the moment. Thousands of Indians flock to the city for a few days to celebrate. Mostly celebration is in the form of getting dressed up in elaborate costume, drinking copious amounts of Bhang lassi (marijuana), then painting their faces and walking around the city in large numbers throwing flowers. It was a real trip. I also met this random western guy who had become a sadhu (a holy man - usually they smoke a lot of weed) who had taken a vow of silence for 12 years! We visited him at his makeshift shack across the Ganges. The shack was a hastely lashed together combination tarps, wood, metal, cloth, etc., He would periodically come to the ghats dressed in a loin cloth, and all he would carry around with him was a trident and a gold bucket to collect money. Varanasi is full of characters like this. It is the most raw place I have ever been.