11 cont.- As difficult as it is to believe, it's still Sunday.
Panday comes for me at 4:00 and we go back to the Ganges because today is a big holy day to Hindus and he wants me to see the celebration.

Before anything else, let me say that it feels really crippling not to be able to eat any of the street food. It's not so much that it looks good, but that it is so much a part of the life of the country. Everybody eats in the kiosks along the side of the road, and socializes. More than most any other country I've been in, I wish I spoke the language. I would love to be able to hang out and chat under a propane lamp, popping pappadoms.

At the moment, to leap ahead, I am stashed in the hotel bar with a gin and tonic, watching Australia play Kenya in cricket, with not a mosquito in sight, no chance of dying miserably beneath the wheels of a massive dump truck, and feeling rather proud of myself that I am here at all. But more of that later.

It takes some while to get to the river this time, and it's difficult to find out why.

What exhausts me about India is that I am trying to pay attention to everything, for example, in the restaurant two musicians, a drummer and flautist, have me enthralled and no one else in the restaurant seems to know that they exist.
Maybe it's because I'm traveling alone, but that's a good reason to travel alone.

In a manner more episodic than chronological, I see so many Japanese people and wonder what they are feeling so far from their home, with all that has happened. They look kind of uncomfortable eating rice with a fork.

I kill a bug in the restaurant. Jains don't like that.

Panday and I walk through the
"old city", though as Mark Twain said, this city is "twice as old as time", and after mNy turns and even more temples, we emerge above the river Ganges, in a soft March evening light.
It really is beautiful, and peaceful.
We are at the top of the stairs of the ghat, and we descend to a beach with piles of flaming branches, the crematorium. He bids me take a seat, on the seats provided.
I watch people being burned up and it's not as weird and existential as I thought it might be. As I consider what's on front if me, I realize that both my parents were cremated, only just not so unabashedly out in the open.
Life goes on, and so does death. I actually feel that i'm not so overwhelmed by something so out of the Oregon ordinary.

A man, from Calcutta, sits down next to me, and takes it upon himself to explain the entire cremation process, who does it (low caste), how much it costs (2000 rupees), and who doesn't get cremated (pregnant women, children under 10, wise men, lepers, and those with chicken pox).
It would be macabre if it weren't riveting.
We decide to continue along the riverfront.
Kids play cricket in the unlikeliest places, somehow hitting balls in spaces the size of basketball courts for a sport ordinarily played on a soccer-sized pitch.
We come on four guys building a boat. I mean, building a boat from scratch: cutting the boards, hand planing the edges, chiseling the lap joints, caulking the seams, hammering it all together with homemade nails. It actually made me sorry that I had sold all my tools.
We ate still walking along the ghats and come to a series of stages/altars decked put in flowers and so, so many colored lights.
Everybody is getting ready for something big.
Panday and I take a seat next to what looks like the main act. Unfortunately, I have to sit in something that makes me cringe.
Deep breath.
Dusk is coming on and people arrive in droves. I tell Panday that I am not as comfortable with all the crowds of people that he is. I hope it didn't sound insulting.
We sat there for a few moments and he said that he had to go to the toilette.
He didn't return for a long time and the mosquitos became vicious. I has not expected to be out after dark so I had not applied any insect repellent, and, as the woman behind me sprayed herself vigorously, I thought, "this is crazy". O saw everyone of the millions mosquitos as huge and laden with malarial death.
Okay, yes an overreaction, but I had warned Panday that the crowds might be too much for me.
He indicated that that would not be a problem, and then promptly said that he needed to find a toilette.
I sat there
and sat there
and sat there,
watching the gathering clouds of mosquitos.
I decided that I can't do this.
I knew that Panday would wonder what the hell had happened to me, but he lived here, after all, he could take care of himself.
I started back to the hotel, not having the slightest which way to go, except against the river of pilgrims.
It was another one of those moments, like I had had in Fez, Morocco so many years, when to be lost in your own city is to be close to God.
I just kept walking.
The lights of the oncoming cars and motorcycles, the cacophony of horns, whistles, singing voices only contributed to the oceanic feeling of being swept along on a tide.
I couldn't stop shaking my head and smiling at the incongruity of it all.
Seriously, I had no idea where I was going and I couldn't take it at all seriously.
Except that i really didn't want to contract malaria.
But it did feel really liberating to be away from Panday and on my own again. I do like him, but there is something to wandering freely that is inexplicable.
A rickshaw driver came up beside me and I decided to get in, telling him to take me to the hotel clark. He jumped at the chance and off we went.
He said that he knew where he was going, but they always say that in Varanasi.
Trucks, horns, and lights to the left of us, trucks, horns, and lights to the right of us, sallying forth into the night rode the two of us.
All this, he said, for 70 rupees
($1.75)! well, let me tell you, after an hour of pedaling, I emptied my pockets to him.

Panday showed up later and we agrees to meet tomorrow.

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