Varanasi

Ok readers, brace yourself for my longest. blog post. ever.

For the last three days, I have been in Varanasi. For those of you who didn't click on my handy little link there, I will tell you a little about Varanasi. It is one of the oldest cities in the entire world. It is also known as Banaras, which is considered to be the more spiritual name for Varanasi. It is located on the Ganges river in Uttar Pradesh.

That's enough history, now I will share my experiences there with you. We arrived in Varanasi at about 11am on Tuesday - and just so you know it was about 117 degrees Fahrenheit as it was every day we were there. We were staying at a guest house at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) because my teacher is very good friends with a professor there. When we first got there we had a lecture about the water supply in India, which is in great demand and not enough supply. After the lecture we went to the guest house to get out bearings at the hotel.

Yup, that's right. All nine girls slept in one room very reminiscent of Madeline. This experience was - interesting - but I think three and a half years or sorority life has prepared me, if for nothing else, this type of living arrangement. It ended up not being so bad. 

There are many pathways down to he river in Varanasi that are referred to as Ghats. We went down to on of the ghats to see the Aarti ceremony that occurs every day at sunset the first night we were in Varanasi. I do not know that it is fair to call it a ceremony because it does not signify anything, so maybe it should be considered a tradition? Anyway, Aarti is a state sponsored activity where every night at sunset flowers with candles in the middle are floated in to the river. We learned that while this is beautiful, it only occurs to bring in tourists to raise money. I was incredibly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people at this particular Ghat. Not only were there people minding their own business, but there were also an insane amount of child beggars. It was incredibly depressing to see the poverty and how it was effecting people on a daily basis. 

After my first full day in Varanasi, I was fairly certain that I wanted to end my trip early and just head home. It was hot, smelly, sad, and just generally uncomfortable. 

On Wednesday we were able to sleep in late, up until 8am, but I could only sleep until 4:30. My teacher's friend, Dr. Sanjay, came to give us a lecture which was incredibly interesting. He works at BHU in gender studies and runs an organization called MASVAW, Men's Action for Stopping Violence Against Women. It is run out of BHU and targets men to educate them in a way they have never thought of before. They have coloring books for young children to teach them that men and women should be treated equally as well as similar tools for adults. For grown men they have playing cards and each card has a different message printed on it such as "real men don't beat their wives," "real men know safe sex is pleasurable sex," and "real men can have any sexual orientation." I think these cards are amazing and I think they would be extremely helpful in America as well. It was interesting to me to see how different countries can all have similar social problems. 

Later on Wednesday we went to Sanjay's home to meet his wife, Madhu. She works at a different university in India teaching teacher education and also focusing on gender issues. I kind of wish I could take a class with Madhu, I think it would be interesting and related to what I want to do with my life. After we talked with Madhu a Sitar (Indian guitar) player and a Tabla (Indian drum) player came to their home to play for us. Since I can't really describe what I saw, I have a video here. Ok, so the video wouldn't upload so here are a couple of pictures.

This morning we woke up at 4:30 to do a sunrise boat ride on the Ganges. It was so beautiful and amazing it really made me appreciate Varanasi in a way that I really couldn't before. 

We all even took turns "rowing" the boat. 

Now we are back in Delhi for the night, and tomorrow we will go to Manali for the remainder of our time here in India. I hope to blog more often with consistent internet access.