Page 24 - india

commission; we just sat there and refused was how one-sided Varanasi is; the east bank
to budge until he started his motor up of the river is totally untouched by buildings,
again and took us where we wanted to go. and the few shacks built by the water's edge
are temporary to say the least.
This infuriated the hotel owner who pre-
tended to take our snub as a comment on his The river is perhaps 200m wide in this, the
hotel (“Rooms very nice sir, just five minutes' pre-monsoon season, but there's a very wide
walk to the river, very clean”) but I'm not go- silt strip on the east bank that gets totally
ing to fall for a rickshaw driver's trick this flooded in the monsoon, more than dou-
far into my Indian experience... so eventu- bling the width of the river. It's no wonder
ally we found ourselves dropped somewhere the east bank is unpopulated if every year
else entirely, though exactly where, we you lose your house, but it still surprised
couldn't work out; the rickshaw driver told me that even on the permanent part of the
us he couldn't drive right down to the ghats eastern bank, where scrubby trees line the
(a lie, I later found out, as rickshaws ran over horizon, there were no houses at all. I would
my toes right at the top of the steps) so we soon discover why Varanasi is perched on
were left to fend for ourselves. It took us a just one bank of the river...
long time to find what we wanted, but it was Ghats are central to life in India. As part of
well worth the effort.
their religion Hindus wash regularly – the
The guest house I chose, Ajay's Guest House Indian version of “cleanliness is next to god-
overlooking Rana ghat, was right on the riv- liness” – and the ghats are the place to wash
er, and from its roof I got a bird's eye view of bodies, clothes, crockery and anything else
the banks of the Ganges (Chris and Martina that gets dirty. But as I discovered in Hampi
chose a slightly more luxurious hotel away during the tika-scrubbing of Holi, the ghats
from the river). What surprised me most are not just communal baths, they're the In-

24 Wine Dine & Travel Spring 2014