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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.
I
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.


Morning in Kathmandu, at the airport, boarding Buddha Air for the flight up into the Himalayans. It is already cold but I am grateful to have a window seat. Luckily, the plane's wings are on top of the fuselage so it will be easier to to see. There is an entire fleet of aircraft taking off simultaneously. Might be quite a crowd up there.
We are scheduled to cruise at 21000 feet, which is 7000 feet below the top of Mt Everest. The pilot invites me to come into the cockpit, just at the moment we turn towards Everest. I take forward to see better and stumble and fall forward onto the controls! I grab for something, anything that hasn't a handle. And the pilot, in turn, grabs me. I have visions of sending the entire plane into the side of Mr. Everest.
He kind of laughs. I can't imagine what the TSA would say about passengers in the cockpit, but, wow, the view is terrific. At the moment, the plane is headed directly at Mt Everest. It's so rare to see anything head-on from an airplane anyway, let alone this!

A woman, who mentions that she is from the Philippines, sits down to look out the window (I have a window seat) at the mountains. we both remark at how little snow there is, except for the highest peaks.
She says that the climate, the world is changinhg. Look at what happened in Japan.
I tell her how glad I am that the Tsunami missed her homeland, though mentioning it only brings the nearness that I was feeling about yesterday's disaster, closer.
Air India to Varanasi.
It takes five separate security screenings, with pat-downs, to finally get on the plane, the final one on the very steps upon entering the plane's cabin.
Hope that it's just security people with too much time on their hands.
After reading my guidebooks, I may have scheduled overly ambitiously my stay in Varanasi.
Every chapter begins, "you will either hate this city or consider it the highlight ....." I'm trying not to dwell on the references to hyper-aggressive touts and smoldering corpses being tossed into the Ganges River.
Up here at 30,000 feet, all that still seems pretty far away, but we are getting ready to land.

After all these days in Asia, India seems more enigmatic than before I arrived. After all that I've read, after all that people have said, the haze over everything only gets thicker.
I have a hard time reconciling human sacrifice which ended only in 1835, all these love-preaching yogis on television.
I leave the airport in a pre-paid taxi and we drive no more than 1/2 k. and we stop on the sun and wait.
And wait.
I wish I had booked an air conditioned cab, but I thought it would be a quick trip.
On the other hand, I couldn't have known that the President I visiting Varanasi and is trying to get to the airport as we are trying to leave.
On the way into town, I would like to hold my camera out the car window and snap the onrushing torrent of traffic but I'm afraid I might not only lose my camera, but also my arm!

Oh thank you! The driver refuses to answer his mobile!

I decide that I need an all in Varanasi, so I hire Panday, the cabdriver, to pick me up tomorrow morning at 5:30 a.m., in order to get a boat ride on the Ganges at dawn.
I have no idea how I am managing this much initiative, after not sleeping at all last night so I wouldn't miss the flight to Everest.

Deborah, you are right, this is NOT you.

Az I wore this, I am recording a man playing on a flute off toy left, while I am surrounded by table after table of acolytes all dressed in white except for one table of monks in orange. People who walk in kiss the hand of one of the monks.
I'm in over my head.
But it's really cool, somehow.
the only part of this that centers me is the maitre'd who keeps stopping by asking me if all is good and do I want another glass of wine, my glass being the only glass of wine, I might add, in the restaurant.
Big monk came over near my table and I smiled at him and he smiled at me and I wondered if I ( being the only westerner in the room) looked as strange to him as he looked to me.

Went next door and bought myself a new shirt. I told the guy at the front desk that it was a chancey thing to do without my wife here but I had to do it, being down to a single shirt.

Across the street, there's a big festival but, you know what, Varanasi is a big enough festival for me right now.
India's beating South Africa in cricket.
I bought a second shirt.
The bartender wants me to open a bar in the States and hire him.
I'm reading "Confessions of a Buddhist atheist".
And I have to get up to see Hindus on the Ganges tomorrow.
I almost called it quits today, but Deb helped me over the hump.
Love. Love.


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