Friday, February 27, 2015, Aboard the Royal Rajasthan on Wheels

Today our train arrived in Varanasi and we made an excursion to Sarnath
(Image courtesy of VENT)
(Click on images to enlarge)

Drying cowpats

The plan for today had been that we would arrive in Varanasi (Benares) at 6 and go for an early morning boat ride on the Ganges, but the train didn’t get to Varanasi until around 10, so we will not be seeing the holy river at dawn. We joined the others in the dining car for breakfast and to go over the checklist for yesterday (Lee and I had missed out on a few good birds but surprisingly few). We were especially interested to see their photos of the pair of Sloth Bears; that was really a lucky find. As we all sat in the dining car birding, I was delighted finally to identify an Indian Jungle Crow, which everybody but me has been seeing regularly. The train was passing through the flat, green farmland of the Gangetic Plain, all divided into small plots. As we neared the city, we watched the countryside from our windows, fascinated with the details of daily life, such as the cowpats being plastered to any available brick wall for drying (for use as fuel). There were many tall chimneys for brick kilns and the air was quite hazy.

We were back in our room when Keith called to us that we were approaching the Ganges and invited us to come to the window in the corridor to watch as the train crossed the very long bridge across the vast river. It was an impressive sight.

Crossing the Ganges into Varanasi

As the train passed into the city, we were given a view of its back streets:

Varanasi

Varanasi

As soon as the train arrived in Varanasi, we were hustled out through the immense and confusing train station to a bus that took us 13 kilometers to Sarnath, the deer park where the Buddha first preached his enlightenment. This is an important Buddhist pilgrimage site and now has Buddhist monuments from many periods and countries. The most interesting for me was the huge brick Dhamekha Stupa. (Stupas were built to enshrine relics of the Buddha or his disciples.) The brick portion of this stupa was built around 500 AD to replace an earlier structure built by the Mauryan King Ashoka in 249 BCE—traces of which exist under the current structure. The stone facing on the lower portions was added later and has handsome carved inscriptions.

Dhamekha Stupa, Sarnath

Dhamekha Stupa, Sarnath

Nearby were the remains of one of Ashoka’s pillars, which he set up around his kingdom inscribed with various proclamations. This one (dating to about 250 BCE) has an inscription in the Mauryan Brami script warning monks and nuns against creating schism. It is a polished sandstone monolith that was 15-meters tall before it was broken into pieces by iconoclasts long ago. It is now displayed behind heavy protection. Even so, we could see inscriptions in different scripts on the several large pieces of the column. The original capital with its four lions (which was adopted as the national emblem of India) is in a museum, but we saw a reproduction on the grounds nearby.

Ashoka Pillar, Sarnath (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Copy of Lion Capital, Ashoka Pillar, Sarnath

Coppersmith Barbet, Sarnath (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

The park had gardens full of flowers, and everywhere there were pots of dahlias in full bloom. There were many Buddhists making pilgrimages to the site, which is quite extensive and has many other ancient monuments and buildings (and the ruins of even more). New structures are still being added to the complex, such as an enormous Buddha in the blessing pose built by Thailand just a few years ago. Naturally, we found birds there as well. There is still a deer park, a walled compound with very tame deer. We enjoyed watching a Coppersmith Barbet making repeated trips to its nesthole there. And a Spotted Dove perched atop a big statue of Anagarika Dharmapala, a 19th Century Buddhist revivalist.

Spotted Dove and Anagarika Dharmapala (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

From Sarnath, we drove back into the busy streets of Varanasi, where our next stop was for shopping. Moan. The train people keep scheduling these captive shopping trips for us; one can only assume somebody is getting a kickback. Dion assures us that he has already managed to forestall several mandatory shopping stops for us during the week. (Bless him!) Because they waste our time this way, I refuse to buy anything.

The boredom of shopping (Gajendra, Harish, and Dion), Varanasi

Jacquard loom, Varanasi

This stop had one redeeming bit of industrial archaeological interest, however. It was a silk-weaving atelier, and they showed us silk brocades being woven by the “new method,” a 150-year-old Jacquard card system. Lee and I were both fascinated watching the cards clicking and clacking to control the design (but we still didn’t buy anything). We were all amused to watch as Zach tried on and was tempted by a handsome and very ornate maharaja-style jacket. It was particularly appropriate for him, because a few days ago in one of the palaces we were touring somebody asked if he were the prince. With his beard, flowing dark hair, and sunglasses, he certainly looks the part. He couldn’t resist the idea of wearing the jacket on his first day back at the office. We enjoyed watching him succumb.

Zach’s new jacket, Varanasi (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

Lunch was yet another buffet in yet another hotel. There was a big engagement party going on, so we snuck in to look at the very elaborate arrangements. I hate to think what the wedding will be like. Afterward, we were taken to the Mother India Temple, which is devoted to the worship of Bharat Mata, the personification of India as a mother goddess, an idea that developed with the Indian independence movement in the late 19th Century. The temple was inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi in 1936 and is most notable for its huge marble topological map of the Indian subcontinent. Outside the building, we got a new bird for the trip, Red-whiskered Bulbuls.

Mother India Temple, Varanasi

Red-whiskered Bulbul (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

Street scene, Varanasi

I found Varanasi to be less attractive than the other Indian cities we’ve visited, though perhaps I was just dispirited because of the heat. I was overwhelmed by the crowding and the poverty. My feeling was that Varanasi represents the world’s future if we can’t do something drastic about population, climate change, and pollution. Actually, things are probably worse than that, as the rest of the world isn’t as kind-hearted toward wildlife as the people of Varanasi are, so it is not even the worst of what’s coming to us all. Princeton sends many of its incoming students abroad for a “bridge year” to spend time doing service and learning more of the world and themselves. Each year one or two of them intern at an organization in Varanasi called Guria. Guria devotes itself to rescuing children who have been abducted for sale to the brothels of Varanasi and to educating the children of Varanasi’s red-light district. Two Princeton students have recently made a film about Guria’s work called Specks of Dust, which we got to see after we returned from India. The film interviews a heart-broken father whose young daughter was snatched while they were walking through a market together. When he finally located her in Varanasi four years later, he was unable to retrieve her, even though she was still a minor, because the brothel owners are protected by corrupt police. I keep wondering how India will ever overcome the corruption that leaches so much out of the lives of its people.

As evening approached, our bus deposited us as close to the Ganges as it could get. We walked through the bustling lanes to one of the ghats and down the steps, immediately being besieged by little girls selling the candle-and-flower boats that one sends down the Ganges. At the bottom of the ghat, we boarded a boat that had an engine so shuddery that it made me feel as though my nose was about to fall off. The boat trip on “Mother Ganga” made me feel as though I were passing through the pages of National Geographic, the vivid colors, the people bathing, the boats criss-crossing the water. (It’s interesting that the far-away opposite bank of the river is completely without buildings, partly because of the floods and partly because of the belief that anybody who dies on that bank of the Ganges returns as a donkey.) It was thrilling to sail along the Ganges seeing the ancient buildings (once beautiful, but now decrepit) and the throngs of people. We stopped for rather longer than I would have preferred at a burning ghat to watch the cremations (being there felt voyeuristic to me).

Scene along the Ganges, Varanasi

Ghat along the Ganges, Varanasi

Buildings along the Ganges, Varanasi

Buildings along the Ganges, Varanasi

Burning ghat along the Ganges, Varanasi (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

For me, one of the highlights of our trip along the river was getting a glimpse of the Varanasi Jantar Mantar. I had known that Sawai Jai Singh II built a Jantar Mantar on a rooftop in Varanasi, but I hadn’t given any thought to trying to see it while we were here. Lee, however, having remembered the photo from one of our books, cleverly spotted one of the instruments atop a riverside building as we went along and pointed it out to me. All we could really see was a big cylindrical enclosure, but that was definitely the Digamsa Yantra, which was used for measuring the azimuth of a celestial body. Yes!

An engraving of the Banaras Jantar Mantar by Archibald Campbell, c.1777 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Jantar Mantar, Varanasi

Eventually we disembarked at another ghat and made our way up to a balcony where we sat to watch Aarti, the evening prayer service. Before us was a platform with nine altars draped in gold silk. Above each of them was an umbrella shape in colored lights, the central one having raindrops of lights falling from it. Leis of flowers and heaps of flower petals decorated the altars. A big lighted sign read “Save Ganga the Source of our Life”. Many people sat on the ghats and many others watched from boats in the river.

Altars for Aarti ceremony, Varanasi

Preparing flowers for the ceremony, Varanasi (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

Once it grew dark, a priest dressed in gold silk performed the ceremony at each of the nine altars. There was much music and much ringing of bells and burning of incense and displaying of yak tails. Lamps in the shape of pyramids were whirled about ablaze with burning ghee. Dramatic and exotic to us, the rituals were clearly deeply meaningful to many of the people in attendance.

Priest performing ceremony, Varanasi (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

Aarti ceremony, Varanasi

Our minders led us away before the ceremony was over, which is when I realized that some of the confusion in the sounds was the result of there being another nine altars on the next ghat, where they were doing the ceremony too, but not quite simultaneously. Varanasi finally redeemed itself for me on the boat ride back up along the ghats in the dark. We were each given a little leaf boat with a candle and flowers to set adrift. We watched as they floated away downstream before we turned to go upstream. The ancient buildings were now truly lovely, their decrepitude erased by the night.

Launching flower boats, Varanasi (Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

Amy launching a flower boat (Image courtesy of Zach Rosenblatt)

We were amused when a Black-crowned Night-Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) floated by in the dark, standing on what I took to be a piece of wood, but which Dion later claimed was a dead body. Soon after, we saw another doing the same and looking very stately. (Our local cultural guide asserted that the bodies that float in the Ganges are those that have been sunk into the water weighted with stones, but whose cords have been broken by “big fishes called the Ganges River Dolphin” (none of which actually survive in this area, due to the pollution).) I made it up all the steps of the ghat without getting too winded and we were soon back on the bus and on our way to the train. At the train station, we were amused to see a happy and comfortable-looking white cow reclining on the platform. As soon as we had our photos downloaded and our electronics charging and had eaten a couple of granola bars, Lee and I turned out the lights rather than joining the others in the dining car. Tomorrow is Agra, so we wanted to be well rested, and in fact I did get a good night’s sleep. Lee’s cough is a bit better and we are getting used to sleeping on the train, even though the train whistle was constantly sounding as we crossed the many dirt roads between the farming villages of the vast, productive Indo-Gangetic Plain. And speaking of cows, Amy made this lovely portrait of one lying on a ghat:

View of a portion of the Indo-Gangetic Plain (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Varanasi
(Image courtesy of Amy Sheldon)

(She speculates that its odd coloration may come from ingesting too many marigolds, as with flamingoes and shrimp.) My birds for the day: