DAY 15 FEB 20 VAVAVAVOOM VARANASI

Buddha Bubba Gets Delhi Belly

So down to the spa for some R and R by a delightful Mongolian.  Stomach pain diminished...
Checking out of the lovely Oberoi I was waiting in line behind Annie and here comes a woman who orders one of the lovely young gals behind the counter to clear her bill  NOW.  I looked over  and said Madame, you will have to wait in line for your turn.  As she shook her blond mane she growled "you two are together" and I clarified no we have 2 separate checkouts. Then she barked "ah, you are a  typical ugly American".  And Bocahita calmly replied "and you my dear will always be Euro Trash".  It was all the sweet counter gals could do to not break out in cheer as Bocahita took down that French Wench.  TOOTS SWEETS FRENCHIE!


On to the plane for the flight to VARANASI...
Pleep was thrilled at the airport to find the local folks welcome him in such fine manner.  He so tried to understand the Hinduism thing... hard to define I said.  More like a way of life Pleep.  It has been influenced by the aspirations and needs of the people from time to time.  It embraces the indigenous religious of India- a mixture of sects, cults and doctrines which have had a profound effect on the India culture- hello Vedas, the Epic and the Puransas.  So Why do Hindu deities have so may arms asked the Pleep??

The locals were in the midst of the major celebration of Shiva. Shiva?  Lord of the Universe. Shiva supports the holy Ganga river on his head and the crescent moon on his mated hair.  This is a festival and a time to keep a vow.  Lots of singing and praise of Lord Shiva.  Devotees on this day abstain from food, ending the fast with a meal of dates and nuts and rice.  And a whole lotta parading around town...  Hinduism is hard for Bocahita to wrap her mind around.  AUM, Ahismsa, Ashrama, Atman, Bhagavad Gita, Chakras, Dharma and the Holy Cow...





All Boca is seeing are cows every where eating garbage, pooping all over and making a mess of the traffic.  We've seen them munch on plastic water bottles.

The sacredness of the cow is a central and a crucial element of the Hindu belief.  The cow is supposed to be the living symbol of mother earth.  And became the in thing to protect- the cow is an affirmation of religious solidarity against Muslim invaders.  Well alrighty then...and we do this today because???  Never mind making a mess of the traffic.


VARANASI
Also known as Kashi- the city of light, is located on the west bank of the Ganges and is India's holiest Hindu city.  The spiritual and religious legacy goes back nearly 3,000 years.  This is the city of Shiva (hey don't my friends sit this way post death of a loved one?)-the foremost among the 12 places where the god burrowed and then burst into the sky in a fiery pillar of light.  Sanctified by Shiva's all-pervading presence and the sacred Ganges, the 90 or so ghats along the river define the life and identity of Varanasi.


 First Stop Sarnath

To Buddhists, Sarnath is as sacred as Varanasi is to Hindus.  The Buddha came to the Deer Park here in 328 BC to preach the Dharmachakra (the Wheel of Law)- his first major sermon after gaining enlightenment.  The central monument of the existing complex is the 5th century AD Dhamekh Stupa, which is built at the site where the Buddha is believed to have delivered his sermon to five disciples...I guess we could say it is the Temple Mount for the  Buddhas right Bubba?

Annie and Bubbs check out the gold leafing on the bricks...Bocahita yells out "looks good to me!".

Dhamekh Stupa, Sarnath's principal monument...Bocahita said hey let's follow the whites.   What's up in that beehive????

So she decides to blend with the Buddhist Monk and Pilgrims...will her Sister Chardonnay  (as Annie so aptly named her) black ensemble give her away???  And the Monk kept giving her the evil eye...a suspect of not being part of the gang.














THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM
A superb collection of Buddhist artifacts....
No camera's allowed but you could touch every dang antiquity.  Huh?  ok have at it Bocahita!  Bocahita yawned through this one.  Hello isn't it time for a glass of something after all that memorialising??












VARANASI aka GHATVILLE

DOWN TO THE GHATS...one of the oldest cities in the world and a contemporary of Babylon, dates to the 7th Century BC.  This eternal city, where religion is an integral part of daily life, has drawn saints, poets and pilgrims through the ages.  Today the major holiday continues with the celebration of Shiva.  We are talking major blowout here.  The streets are loaded with garbage, crowded with people, hawkers, beggars and of course the sacred cows roaming and sitting everywhere.  It compares to nothing I have experienced-ever.


The children are beautiful and breaking my heart....begging, begging and more begging.  Some are enterprising selling little gifts.  These two girls are selling the floating candles that the pilgrims float on the Ganges River.  The problem is when you give one money 100 more rush and crush you.  I know it is better to give to a Sister Nectaria but I just can't help myself now and then when I see that precious face and beautiful eyes.  It is hard to understand why a parent would have their child beg.  Less than half of the children 6-14 attend school and the literacy rate is dropping.

The Ganges starts in an ice cave in the Himalayas and flows for 1,569 miles.  It is called Mother Gaga and is India's main spiritual and religious artery, sacred to millions of Hindus who believe that to bathe in this water is to be absolved of all sins, and to be cremated on its banks and have one's ashes immersed in its waters insures salvation of the soul.  So away we float up the Ganges to observe the Ghats, a major celebration of Shiva and more cremations.  Dozens of "row boats" ply up and down the river to view a unique experience...











Yes, that is the motor for our boat.  oy double vey.

Row Row Row your boat..down the ghats.  There are 90 ghats that line the river front, where the living come to be purified by the waters.

It's all about death and rebirths... my friends this is not the Med.

But first a major league celebration to honor Shiva...the biggie for the Hindus.  Wow...it made Mardi Gras look like a joke.  Bocahita is learning about the Guru- the spiritual guide.  We all know she has been so looking for the Guru of Weight Loss to no avail.  On the other hand she so loves the concept of Karma.  The law of Karma means that every good thought word or deed begets a similar reaction which affects our next lives and every unkind thought or evil deed comes back to harm us in this life or the next.  And there you go.  Do you believe in Karma??

And there are the ceremonial burnings of the dead...wow.  For a Christian girl this was beyond my comprehension and understanding.  Watching the service for a second time (Kathmandu) families burn their Moms and Dads- was very emotional.  Creepy?  Uncomfortable?  Eerie?  All of the above?  We all have our beliefs about the here after or not.  Cremation Ghats...thousands of years old and still practiced today.  Bringing new meaning to come on baby light my fire.

We light the candles to honor the dead...  Will you be buried in the ground?  Crypt?  Cremated?  Ashes spread?  What will your ending be?  Or will it be the beginning?  There are many rituals performed in the Ganges and over 700 temples here.    The daily prayers at dawn and dusk serve as a salutation to the river.  Oil lamps are offered and bells ring while sacred mantras are chanted.  And what about that Nirvana?  Bocahita was told that Nirvana is a union with the Supreme (Brahman) through moksha -release from the cycle of birth and death and the pain, sorrow and suffering of the human condition.  It is the immediate experince of the ego-less self with the blissful Brahman.  The "Gita's" method is by the practice of yoga- oh joy.  Go Bubs.







And Bubs lit the candle to send off a prayer in the Ganges.  As you know I am very Orthodox but I felt compelled to honor the dead and participate in others way of worship and honoring the dead.  Is this a sin?  How do you honor your dead?  Other peoples dead?

And if it couldn't get any weirder...I took a picture of the floating candles on the Ganges and these ORBS appeared.  I had heard about ORBS before but shrugged them off as foolishness.  Do you see the white "balls" in the sky?  I know- what are they?  Are they backscatters that have been broadly  viewed as a variable range of paranormal phenomena without verifiable causation?  Energy being referred from a source?  Ghosts in the form of balls of light?  The human soul or life force of those that once inhabited a physical body?  Well, this is what I know.  I have taken over 30,000 pictures in the past few years and never ever have I taken a picture and orbs have shown up.  So there we are with all these burning of bodies and religious ceremonies going on....then the Orbs show up.   Has anything like this happened to you?  What do you think????  Is it the lack of Chardonnay due to the VAT?  Oh heck yes, you see them like I did.  Now what?

Oh what a night.  We are numb from all of that....a good nights sleep is soooo needed.