Mar. 7 - Varanasi, India

Tuesday, March 7 :: Varanasi, India :: 0km today / 5739km total

Before arriving in Varanasi I had decided to stay in a midrange hotel near the train station, to get away from the Old City's touts and crime. So it was a long early morning rickshaw drive through jam-packed streets down to the ghats.

Varanasi is Hinduism's most religious city, as I understand it. It is the city of Shiva, and where many Hindus come to die. The Ganges River is lined with ghats (steps leading down to the river) where people pray, wash clothes, bathe, and hold funerals. I decided to "walk the ghats", from one end to the other, to observe the human spectacle. I came across one funeral of a particularly holy man, so holy that his body did not need to be burned to cleanse it - the body went straight into the river (in a box). Nearby were goldpanners sifting through the riverside mud and ash - reminiscent of the Yukon, except that the source of gold in the Ganges in Varanasi has nothing to do with geology.

It was getting hot, damn hot, thank-god-i'm-not-cycling hot, and I melted my way back to my hotel district, straight over to a neighbouring 5-star's swimming pool. Ahhhhhhh. After a few hours I meandered my way back to my hotel, and around 4 p.m. went to my room to relax a bit before dinner...

During a movie on HBO, around 6:20 p.m., there was a loud bang coming from the direction of the railway station, and it made my room shake. I figured there was some confusion in the station, some trains had bumped, no biggie. I mean, this is India, Safe and Sound India. After the movie was over I was flipping channels and saw that something big was going on, although I couldn't decipher the Hindi, so I kept flipping. CNN India is in English, and it turned out the bang was a bomb, one of a few co-ordinated bombs that went off around Varanasi. One bomb was in an important Hindu Temple, another at the train station, and a few others were found that didn't go off. As I was watching, a report stated that the train station bomb happened inside a train, the Shiv Ganga Express. Hmmmm. Why is that name vaguely familiar? OH MY GOD. My insides froze over as I reached over to my money pouch, and pulled out my train ticket for tomorrow:

08/03/06
6:45 p.m.
Varanasi to Delhi
Shiv Ganga Express

Pretty crazy, eh? Ya. It took a bit of time to shake that one off, but I got up and went out to the street to get to an Internet cafe. As I was walking along there was a loud bang that scared the crap out of me and had me ducking into a corner, but the Indians laughed and pointed to a wedding that was proceeding onwards, hell or high water. They were letting off small fireworks. Most shops had closed up, and I had to retreat to the expensive internet and food at the hotels. Its probably a good thing not to be on the streets tonight, anyways - things could get crazy. There is already talk of this being a Pakistani-based terrorist bombing, and Hindus have a history of violent blind revenge (in 2002 a train fire which killed 59 Hindu pilgrims inspired the massacre of around 2000 Muslims, although it has later been shown that the fire was accidental). I hope the local Muslims are smart enough to stay inside.