Day 36 (3rd March) Varanasi

The tour we signed up to includes one free sightseeing trip which turned out to be a boat trip down the Ganges. Dozens of boats run twice a day, in the morning to see the sunrise and in the afternoon to see the sunset. We had been booked for the morning which meant getting up at 5 AM and walking about a quarter of a mile along the river bank to Assi Ghat where boats of all different sizes had congregated. We were instructed to speak to Mr Dipak among the hundreds of people who had assembled there, many of whom had been watching the morning Aarta. Mr Dipak approached us (although there were several Westerners, we were pretty obvious) and directed us onto the biggest boat. We were urged by several people, including a precocious little girl, to buy a bowl holding offerings to the God consisting largely of flower petals. After the Aarta finished, the seven officiants came down to the boat and performed a prayer. We also saw a sad little service where a mother and father and little girl were addressed by a priest and made their Aarta, putting a candle in the river. There were no tears and the man at Manikarnika told us yesterday that no-one must cry because the funeral is an occasion for joy; the deceased has achieved moksha which will allow their passage to nirvana and avoid the cycle of rebirth. From the boat we had a splendid view of most of the 84 ghats over a distance of 5 miles including the “Panchatirthi” (five sacred ghats: Assi, Dashashwamedh, Adikeshaba, Panchganga, and Manikarnika).