A Tale from Varanasi

How does it feel when you finally go to a place you always wanted to go but you never thought you will? Or you never thought you will go so soon?

Varanasi is one place I'd always wanted to go to. Little did I know that I'll get a chance in my first year of college. It was our field studio. The ghats of Varanasi are an altogether different world (according to me). You see a body being cremated and a few meters away you see people having their morning bath. One can see a family mourning death and a few meters away another family celebrating a birth. In the Manikarnika ghat, i.e. the cremation ghat, every ten minutes, a corpse is taken to be cremated. In the same ghat, a few meters away people can be seen sitting and sipping hot chai. Varanasi is the spiritual capital of India. I used to say it's the religious capital until I was corrected by someone.

We were in Varanasi for 10 days. Many incidents occurred. I met many people, I heard many stories. From the locals, from my classmates, from my teachers. But there's one I won't forget.

Graffiti is illegal though.

One day while strolling along the ghats, it suddenly came to my notice that one can find a lot of foreigners in Varanasi. Some were simply strolling around, some painting walls, some playing with local kids. I grew curious and I wanted to know what brought them here. I spoke to a few people that day. I particularly remember a Lativian citizen because he showed me his passport as I didn't get his nationality. (I didn't know there was a nation called Latvia). And another couple, a lady from Britain and a gentleman from Australia who has been to more cities in India than I have been. I forgot most of their names. But I have a few pictures.

The lady from Britain and the gentleman from Australia.

The Latvian citizen.

The same evening while walking back to go to my hotel along with a friend I met another traveler. I just wanted to ask a couple of questions about Varanasi, but we went to have an hour-long conversation. He was Wentao from China. He told me he was 26 years old and did his masters in the Russian language from Russia. And he was traveling since the day he graduated. I was intrigued. The first question that came to my mind was how he managed his finances? He said he traveled cheap, mainly stayed in hostels, etc. This traveler, he wrote stories about people he meets. He showed us his social media and all the stories he'd written. He wanted to write about us too. He asked us many questions. About faith, about Ganga, about Varanasi. And he told us he'd seen the carcass of a cow floating in the river and a man taking bath in the same water. He was in Varanasi for just an evening and was leaving for Thailand the next morning. We told him a couple of things he shouldn't miss, like the Ganga Arti and Kashi Vishwanath temple. When we got up to leave he asked us if he could click a picture of ours for his story. We obliged, he clicked a couple of pictures, asked us to pick the one we liked, said our goodbyes and left.

The story that Wentao wrote about us.

A week later, on our second last day in Varanasi, we were all supposed to vacate our hotel rooms. Our college had booked the rooms for 6 days and most of us decided to stay an extra day. Most of my friends checked back into the same hotel, I decided to go stay in a hostel (greatly influenced by Wentao). And I did. I found a hostel I liked. I stayed for only one night but it felt very different and nice. I felt liberated. I was always used to having friends around me. Spending a night in a backpacker's hostel amongst strangers was something I never thought I'd do. I had an early morning flight the next day. I couldn't socialize. I couldn't talk to anyone, I didn't make friends. But trust me it felt really nice. That day before checking into the hostel, I almost spent half the day roaming around on my own. Another first. Another feat I accomplished. And I'm very proud of myself. And I'm really thankful to this Chinese traveler, whom I might have hardly spoken to an hour, but did make a change in my life.