Varanasi

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted last. Sorry about that. I've been so busy! I just got back from a weekend in Varanasi. Hindus consider Varanasi the holiest place to die because they cremate bodies right on the banks of the Ganges and then pour the ashes into the river. It's a pretty intense place. Every so often as you're walking through the narrow, windy streets, a procession of 6 or 8 men will walk by chanting and carry a body covered in fabric on a stretcher-type-thing toward the "burning gatt". You can go out in a boat and see the whole scene from the water, too, which was pretty cool. We went out at sunrise on Friday morning and again in the evening to watch this ceremonial offering the priests give to the river every night. 

The other big thing they do in Varanasi is manufacture silk. There is a big Muslim population living in the areas set back from the river a bit and they are famous for their silk factories. A lot of them give tours of their "factories" which are basically all of of houses in the few blocks around their shops where they have divided all the production tasks among the people living there. It is mostly a gimmick to get you to buy silk from them, but a few things about it were really interesting. For example, they weave the patterns into the silk by first sketching a design on graph paper and then making cards with holes punched in certain patterns to feed into the loom to get it to weave in those patterns. It's basically just like old fashioned computer programming and they have been weaving fabrics like that for centuries. In one of the houses on display there were three little boys sewing sequins onto fabrics. It obviously had not even occurred to our guide that he might not want to show off where he employs little kids. The truth of the matter is that most kids here need to make some money by that age and as working conditions go, sewing at home is not so bad.

Saturday we went to Sarnath, a nearby town where Buddha apparently gave his first sermon. There was a park and a monument commemorating that and a few Buddhist temples in the area.