We reached Bodh Gaya early in the morning just in time to see the local police clearing the temple entrance of hordes of people who had been sleeping there. The main attraction in Bodh Gaya is the Maha Bodhi temple which is a Unesco world heritage site. The temple was erected at the site where Buddha is said to have reached enlightenment and is one of the four most important Buddhist sites around the world. This is the main temple:

The grounds were busy:

and there were plenty of people prostrating themselves, one guy had a counter on his wrist, probably aiming for his 10,000 prostrations a day, it was tiring watching them!

We drove from Bodh Gaya to Varanasi and navigated our way to the waterfront.

Varanasi is said to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world and judging by the amount of rubbish lying around it probably is! We spent most of our time in the streets of the old town and along the waterfront by the “ghats” which are stepped sections of the waterfront each with it’s own character.

The waterfront can seem romantic:

Majestic:

Colourful:

Functional:

and sometimes challenging, two of the ghats are “burning ghats”, they are used day and night to burn the dead, one is for Hindus, the other for Muslims.

First the bodies are washed in the Ganges and water is poured into their mouths so that their final drink is from the river:

Then they are cremated. There can be as many as ten funeral pyres burning, the process is very raw and certainly more transparent than a western cremation:

We were told that everyone can be cremated except for five groups, children, pregnant women, holy men, people who have died of a cobra bite and lepers.The first four they don’t cremate because their bodies are considered to be pure, the lepers don’t get cremated because they would smell too much – very pragmatic!

So that was Varanasi, off today to Lucknow.