Taking the waters of the Ganges...

Not literally, of course - that would doubtless kill us within hours; the particulate level of faecal matter in the river is supposedly 250,000 times the safe limit!
We find ourselves now in Varanasi, also known as Benares, the city of Shiva on the banks of the Holy Mother Ganges. This is the destination of thousands of Hindu pilgrims who come here to the ghats or steps along the Western bank to wash, drink and be cremated; all 3 acts often occurring within metres of each other.
Our journey here from Khajuraho was relatively pleasant. Leaving the town by bus along a dirt road, we arrived at the nearest railhead 4 hours later and waited for our night train to whisk us East overnight in just 11 hours, arriving a mere 4 hours late. Most of the guest houses here are orientated around the river so we made our way blindly through winding streets, picking up the usual helpful guides along the way, and installed ourselves in a suitable hostel. The city seems so focussed on the river that its back streets are some of the dirtiest we have seen, a rare trophy in India! Here people come a poor last in street priority of cow, dog, goat and monkey and after being pushed out the way by your 5th cow it starts to get to you.

The Ganges holds a mystical attraction for Hindus; it is believed to flow from the foot of the God Vishnu and that washing in it or drinking from it can absolve the sins of the past 3 incarnations, and being cremated beside it will release one from the eternal cycle of reincarnation. As such the funeral business here is worth a fortune, with bonfires burning night and day, a constant industry for preparing the bodies, praying for them and carrying them to the pyres and finally to the river. Though we didn't take photos, we spent a good hour from a vantage point watching the process one night; slightly ghoulish and Rachel the pyro was a little too interested for my liking!
Dawn is one of the best times to witness the ritual puja, or cleansing, performed in the river by Hindus and so we dragged ourselves up for another Indian dawn to haggle with a boatman and see what we could see. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between someone having a good scrub and a real Brahman praying, but we tried. Every now and again there is the distraction of a tragic westerner who has lost it and gone native, swimming merrily, and the odd local washing his bike in the river before taking a long drink pull from the magical waters!
Next move is another mammoth overnight train journey, swiftly down the Ganges to Calcutta.