Holy Cities

Varanasi

Varanasi is a strange place. it is a lot more calm and peaceful then delhi. but still loud busy and hectic as ever. one good thing however is there are a lot less touts, people trying to take your money from you. its a very colorful and vibrant city and one of the dirtiest places i think i have ever been, about every meter or so there is a nice big pile of poo, whether that is cow, dog, or human, doesnt really matter, it is everywhere. same with garbage, it is absolutely everywhere! it almost feels like you are living on top of a garbage dump, when in all reality, you probably are. Varanasi is the holiest city in india for hindus and the ganges river is the centre of it all. it is the one place where every hindu wishes to die. and along the river bank are about 60 ghats all dedicated to various different things, however the most striking of the ghats are the burning ghats. where the dead are publicly cremated. they are brought down to the ganges, dipped into the water and then set a blaze. it is interesting how i can go from never seeing a dead body in my life to seeing at least 5 a day. every person i had seen burnt had died within the last 6 hours (they do not have room to store bodies for any longer as many people come to varanasi solely to die.) i arrived in varanasi on the 8th of july after taking a 14 hour train journey from delhi. i decided to opt for a first class ride for my first train journey in india, just to calm my nerves and get used to things. i arrived at 7:30 on the morning of the 9th, still not having heard anything from either jack or alicia since i arrived in india. i decided to stay in the old city near the ghats at the vishnu rest house. it was an alright place nice big room with a roof fan and my own bathroom. but the thing that i really enjoyed and was the first thing i did when i arrived. went upstairs to the rooftop restaurant to have breakfast. i was able to drink my morning coffee with a mango lassi and enjoy the opportunity to get a birds eye view of one of the most holiest cities in the world. after breakfast i went down to have a shower and unpack. once i had finished i get a knock on my door and there is jack and alicia! they had not been up able to get onto the internet due to the frequent power cuts in varanasi (we get about 10-15 power cuts a day that can last for anywhere between 2 minutes to 3 hours, city wide) so they had just decided to check the surrounding guest houses and the first one they checked, i was in. they asked 'have you had any canadians check in recently, big guy with a camera?' during my first day in varanasi we walked along the ghats for the majority of the day taking photos and people watching, and telling people off as well, something you get very used to doing in india. and especially when traveling with a female, alicia gets stared at every where she goes and has some quite outlandish things said to her, there has been many a time where me and jack have had to almost aggressively get people to move on and stop staring/taking photos/vidoes etc. anyways, when they arrived i was so happy to see them because i was almost begging to talk to someone! once night time fell we went over to jack and alicia's place to have dinner on their roof top restaurant. really really great. the first night i spent in varanasi was hell. the power cut out in the middle of the night for about 2 hours and that means the fan goes off and you get woken up by the heat! i had a really restless night. the next morning i made the decision to pack up, check out and move over to the sandiha guest house where jack and alicia where staying. they have a generator. the next day we decided to head to a little town just outside varanasi where the budda gave his first sermon. quite a nice little town but frankly nothing to special other then seeing the the sights. also while we where there i got my fist taste of the indian monsoon, it poured! and i dont think i have ever heard thunder so loud, the very ground beneath me shook. so i wrapped my camera up in a plastic bag and went out shooting! the next few days mostly consisted of wondering the ghats taking photos, taking boat trips up and down the ganges to get river side shots and eating on our very cheap and very good rooftop restaurant, usually with our laptops and camera's out to edit photos. oh and speaking of which, because i was doing that, i was approached by an editor of a belgian yoga magazine who would like to use one of my photos for the cover that he saw on my computer whilst i was editing. pretty cool, just a byline tho, so not sure if i will accept. we shall see. the last two days in varanasi where the most interesting however. on sunday i was walking around on my own taking shots and i ran in to some kids who wanted their photo taken ( i usually say no because they almost always ask for money afterwards, but you do get the odd ones who just get excited about seeing themselves on the back of the camera.) so i decided to do so and they just had a blast! dancing and playing around while i snapped away and then all of a sudden as if out of no where this old man appeared (the one after the shots of the kids on facebook) and said 'it is very rare for foreigners to be so kind, you have a good heart' it turns out this old man is a guru at one of the ghats who also is a palm reader. i ended up spending a good 3 or 4 hours with this man (Udar) who ended up telling me a hole world of knowledge about my self. and as of "nine july two thousand nine" i have moved into my 'golden age' a time of great change and knowledge. there are three ages we reach in our life and i have just moved into my second. my lucky day is monday and i must of had very good karma in my past lives as i am extraordinarily fortunate and lucky in this life. the sun and water loves me. oh and i will live until i am around 91 years old! however i must always make sure to be extra careful and always watch out for my self. i should also trust no one. only my self. oh and when i am 23 i am going to make it big in the media industry. =D the last day in varanasi was probably the most dramatic and morally controversial. we took a boat ride over to the other side of the river (northern india hasnt been hit very hard by the monsoon yet so the ganges is still quite low) and there where little shops set up where the water normally would be and kids playing cricket. oh and rotting human corpses and skeletons. and of course the photojournalist in me just had to get up close and personal to get the shots, so i spent a good hour or so photographing skulls and recently washed up rotting, skin and hair still intact human bodies. thinking 'this is so fucked up.' i dont think i will post those photos onto facebook as they are a bit disturbing compared to the cliche tourist photos of varanasi most people would be putting up. but if anyone would like to see them, send me an email, otherwise they should be up on my website once i get back home. but i am going to try and get them up on demotix asap. oh and as we where walking back to the boat, i stray dog had begun to eat one of the human corpses on the back of the ganges. yes i have photos, i am not proud of them, but it had to be taken.

as i am writing this i am sitting on the train to haridwar to spend a few days up north, really looking forward to it! ill post up more details about that soon!

miss you all

quinn

Train to Haridwar

i have arrived in haridwar. the train journey was incredible. although it was a good 24 hour journey, it was truly spectacular. we arrived in our compartment and sitting there was this french canadian girl, so many canadians are in india! she was really really nice and a good person to talk too. we travelled in "ac" aka three shitty ceiling fans, 3-tier, meaning we had three beds all lined up on one side of the wall to sleep in for the night, during the night was the most spectacular natural event i have ever seen in my life, nothing in the movies or on tv, nothing at all could compare to this. it was the most phenomenal lightning storm i have ever seen, it was as if the skies were giving us a light show, off in the distance was at least somewhere between 200-300 maybe even substantially more, lightning strikes going off every minute, and this went on for hours, at least 4 hours. and the lightning was sometimes behind the clouds and it always gave off this orange glow, it wasnt the normal white/blue lightning, it was always a yellow or orange. the only real way to describe this spectacle: it was biblical, it was fucking apocalyptic. and probably one of the most amazing things was being able to sit in the carriage door of the train leaning outside and half of the sky was the most amazing stars you have ever seen and then it turned into this biblical phenomenon. sadly, no pictures it was next to impossible to shoot on the train, if only i could have been on the ground with a tripod.

i am currently sitting in my hotel room in haridwar and i am feeling miserable, i am sick as a dog, all of my muscles are aching, running nose, coughing, sneezing, the works. wonderful. well see if i can make it for 5am tomorrow morning to go shooting. goodnight from haridwar.

quinn

quite post here as i dont have much time, i have just arrived in rishikesh from spending two nights in haridwar, still feeling quite sick (yesterday was horrible, i spent the whole day in bed) but rishikesh, is AMAZING! it is so beautiful here, it is at the foot of the himalayas and it just a wonderful place. this is all i am going to write for now, but ill will try to get another longer entry up soon, i have not been able to get on the internet a lot while i have been here so dont worry to much mom if you dont hear anything for a few days! im fine!