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Varanasi is one of the most energetically charged places I have ever visited. It is an all-out assault on all six senses…and then some. Think Burning Man… x 1 million… on psychedelics. This city is not for the faint of heart.

Varanasi, as I’ve been told, is the holiest city in . A Mecca for Hindus who come here from all of India> to cleans themselves, get married, or die. Hinduism has thousands of gods – each one being some reincarnation of another within a different form and meaning but all originating from Vishnu. The city is littered with beautiful temples. Some are just little cubby holes on the side of the road while others are large and cavernous with multiple halls. All of them are adorned with images of the god they worship as well as offerings in the form of flowers, paint, and food. I cannot find the words to describe the spiritual beauty here. It seems like every day is a holiday for some god here.

Varanasi seems like a city straight out of the middle ages. It was built on the northern coast of the Ganges (pronounced Ganga). The river here is literally 1 million times more toxic than the FDA’s limit on drinking water particulates. I shit you not…. and speaking of shit… there’s lots of it here. Tons actually. On a any given 5 minute walk to a Ghat (waterfront) one will invariably see all of the following: Piles of garbage, street children playing in said garbage, free-flowing sewage, water buffalo dropping 5 pounds of dung (splat!), sleeping street dogs and their litters, and if you are lucky a nice rotting goat corpse in a bag.

Funerals occur all day long. The body is wrapped in colorful fabric and flowers and paraded on a stretcher by the entire family down to one of two “Burning Ghats.” Photography is prohibited here. Have you ever inadvertently breathed in the ashy smoke of a burning corpse? Well, I can now safely scratch that off of my to-do list. The main man of the family performs a ritual over the body while the rest of the family looks on. Then they burn it and scatter the remains in the river…the same river where they bathe, do laundry, and dump sewage. It’s quite a sight.

on the days before Shivaratri… the largest holiday/gathering for Shiva. So, in addition to the craziness that I wrote above there were hundreds of Sahdus (Hindu holy men) camped out in tents on the river banks. These guys are basically the Hindu version of rastas who have dedicated their lives to spirituality. They also smoke ganja all day long around the fire, spit huge lougies constantly, and are eager to have you sit with them so they can rap with you about their beliefs.