11

Arose early this morning so as to meet Panday in the lobby for a ride to the Ganges and there take a boat out onto the water to see the ghats (steps) at dawn.
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We agreed to meet at 5:30 and while I was there, he wasn't. When he arrived 15 minutes later (by my watch 5:45), he laughed and said that I was still on Nepal time- 15 minutes difference. Who knew?
We drove in his little white cab to the river, in the darkness. When we parked and walked through the empty food stalls with sleeping bodies scattered here and there, and huddled groups of pilgrims waiting to enter the hindu temples, I could only be thankful that I had contracted with Panday to show me the way. We turned a corner and there was the Ganges River, hazy and already covered with boats, a trip on the river at dawn being required .
Panday told me not to pay 500 rupees; 200 was enough, no matter what he says.
"I tell him that you are not tourist, but important government official".
He was a young kid and actually spoke english better than Panday.
I bought two little flower boats with candles in them ( "for you, sir, and your wife, for long life and much happiness"). A really good deal, I thought, for 20 rupees.
He rowed upriver and pointed out all the temples and houses that had been built by the maharajahs of the past. They all wanted to come here to die because if you die and are cremated with the wood of the banyan tree and your ashes are thrown into Mother Ganga, well, I'm not sure exactly what happens then, but it's a GOOD thing.
He told me, as hard as it is to believe, that , in 1978, the river flooded over all the steps and almost up to street level, maybe 30 feet higher. During an especially heavy monsoon.
We rowed back downriver, as far as the major place of cremation.
Piles a stacked logs (200 kilos of wood required to completely burn up an adult, at 150 rupees a kilo for the wood of the banyan tree-expensive, he says), are prepared for the nearly 400 cremations that occur every day, though not in the morning-unnerves the tourists.
I am going down to the river this afternoon with Panday, to witness the festivals and cremations-no pictures, though. In a way, it's a good thing that I have committed to meet Panday, otherwise it might be tempting to just hang out at the hotel and enjoy the silence. But hey, I've come this far...

All along the road, as I walked to the Ganges, people lay on pieces of cloth with very few belongings, staring. Not necessarily at me, in fact, hardly anyone, except for one tenacious woman with a limp baby to whom I gave some money, asked for anything.
They just stared.
And thought.
But of what, I can't even imagine.
In America, a person begging doesn't seem like from a different millennium, but here, these people's thoughts might be 5000 years away.
When a water buffalo standing ten feet away, the timeless Mother Ganga, a dirty morsel of cauliflower, a scrap of cloth comprise the whole of the Universe, I can only wonder.
Look, here I am wondering why data roaming isn't working on my IPhone, like it did in Kathmandu, while some half-naked Indian saddhu trys to sort out the beginning of Time.

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