Thursday Oct 13, 2005 -
day 14 - Khajuraho to Varanasi - Kathy: 172 photos, Bob: 124 photos
Today at breakfast, many of us met five people from
another OAT group. We were told that
they misjudged the traffic problems and got to the airport too late. Therefore, they missed their flight to
After breakfast, we started out going to old
temples. This is my favorite way to
spend a day. First, we went to a site
where there are lots of ancient Hindu temples from the 9th, 10th,
and 11th centuries. Our local
city-guide said that there were 85 temples in a ten-square mile area, but only
fifteen survive today.
These temples are very beautiful and we took lots of
photos. Again I say: I love old
temples, regardless of their religion.
Part of their beauty is
because the Muslims never invaded that area, so the temples were never
destroyed and defaced like so many thousands of others were in
They are also famous, because the temples have carvings
from Tantric yoga. Tantra is an ancient
sect (4000 years old) of Hinduism that taught, among other things, that
ecstacy, or Samadhi, can be achieved through sexual intercourse. You may have heard of their holy book, the
Kama Sutra. Therefore, the temples have
lots of carvings of many things: horses, Gods and Goddesses, but the most
famous carvings show various sex acts.
What can I say? Sex sells.
One of the them depicts the
“69” position,
and another shows bestiality.
The thing is, these carvings
were not lewd or obscene at all. The
gods and goddesses shown were shown with serene, meditative looks on their
faces, not faces portraying lust.
We were told that there are two thousand original period
statues, which means no restoration has been done.
The grounds were beautiful, with lush green grass. There were men out cutting the lawn the old
fashioned way.
Our guide said that it used
to be filled with water, and people would get to the temples by boat, which
must have been pretty amazing.
I took lots and lots of photos, and I went into a couple
of the temples. Inside one temple, Kathy
said to me, “You must have been a Hindu in your past life.”
I asked, “Why do you say that?”
She said, “Because you’ve always liked your women curvy,
with big hips, and voluptuous, just like all these statues.”
Well, who was I to argue?
Of course, I always tell people that I must have been a corset in my
past life, because they were popular in the 1800's and they are used to hold
tightly onto the curvy hips, waist and breasts of a woman. But I digress.
We weren’t given much time at the site. We were given twenty minutes to look around
on our own, and of course, I could have stayed there all day, but I assumed
that we were hurrying so that we could fit everything in with plenty of time to
get to the airport.
Next, we went to view some ancient Jain temples.
The Jain temples were
fascinating. They were a lot like the
Hindu temples we saw earlier, minus the sexual stone carvings. There were carvings that were just as
elaborate, but they depicted the Jain masters conquering the demons of
confusion, depicted as dragons.
So there were carvings with
masters and dragons, everywhere.
I didn’t know much about Jainism, so I tried to get as
much as possible out of our guide, who gave us a little lecture about
them. I have not tried to verify any of this,
so I am just taking his word for it.
Jainism is supposedly older than Buddhism, and
Christianity. There was a line of
twenty-four Jain masters. The last
master was a contemporary of Buddha, so around 500 B.C.
The Jains don’t believe in a supreme Creator. They say the Earth and sky were always
there. They say that we created
ourselves. Because they don’t have a
concrete God or Creator to worship, they don’t have the deities and idols found
in Hinduism. They have no God to
worship, so that made the religion harder for the common people to understand
and swallow. Therefore, it gained less
popularity than Buddhism which has very well defined paths and goals. The Jains stress that each of us walks our
own path alone. Even when surrounded by
people, we are still walking alone.
Therefore, only the strong, brave person is saved. Their code of ethics is “Live and Let Live”
and so their path is of non-violence extremism. They don’t eat meat, they don’t
eat vegetables that they have to pluck.
They basically can only eat fruits and vegetables that have ripened and
fallen off the plant naturally. They
won’t step on an ant or a spider, and they won’t even walk on grass because
they are afraid of hurting the grass.
The founder of Jainism was a guy named Mahabira, and
supposedly he had gathered thirty-thousand followers by the end of his career,
whereas Buddha had five disciples and only twelve thousand followers, and of
course Jesus twelve disciples and perhaps only hundreds of followers.
Today there are four million Jains, divided into two
primary sects. The first is Degambra, or
the “Naked Ones.” They’re so serious
that they don’t even wear clothes. The
second sect is Suitambra, meaning “White Clay” or “The Truth.”
We looked around the two temples, but we were only given
five minutes to see the temples, then we were rushed off. Pretty soon, the bus turned into another one
of those expensive over-priced tourist shops.
Kathy was pissed. Here we thought
they were rushing to get us to the airport on time, but instead, they rushed us
into a shop to buy more overpriced goods!
Kathy was so furious that we complained to Sujay. Sujay graciously paid a car and driver to
bring us back to the Jain temple where we had more time to look around, take
photos, and climb to the top of these beautiful temples.
Inside the temples were black stone statues of the Jain
master that looked like Buddha.
Outside the temples, we did some brief shopping at
reasonable shops, then walked back to our car where we could catch up with the
rest of the group at lunch. The driver
was waiting patiently outside the compound.
When we got into the car, the driver said, “Where are you going?”
These were not words we wanted to hear. We never got the name of the hotel we were
staying at, nor the name of the hotel where lunch was going to be served. We had assumed that Sujay told the man where
to bring us afterward, and maybe he did but the guy forgot. At any rate, we were lost. But the town is not that big. The driver drove to a local travel office and
yelled inside, in Hindi, “Hey, where do the OAT groups eat lunch?” The occupant yelled something back and soon
we were off. We arrived at the correct
hotel, just in time to catch lunch, another bland meal. I’m getting really tired of hotel
restaurants.
After lunch, we went to the airport and went through the
security checks. These checks were more
secure than anything I’ve seen in the
Once on the plane, I waited until we were at cruising
distance, then I pulled out the laptop and started writing. After two sentences, they announced that we
were starting our descent, and I had to power-off the laptop again. I thought it was a one-hour flight, but it
seemed like only a half-hour from start to finish.
Now we are in the city of
It turns out that
After gathering our luggage at the airport, we drove to
the hotel and on the drive in, we could see the city was dirty; piles of trash
in the streets with cows eating out of it.
After driving to the hotel
and checking in, it was already close to dark outside.
The
hotel lobby had a large, lovely fountain that was in everyone’s way. It had beautiful lotus flowers floating
inside.
Nevertheless, we took our bus
to a certain location, and from there, we hopped on bicycle-rickshaw
taxis. These rickshaws took us down to
the
The noise was horrendous.
We were told that there was a special custom in
The traffic was complete chaos. People were coming and going in literally
every direction. Motorcycles were
driving the wrong way down the one-way streets.
Cows and water buffalo were walking briskly in all directions, stopping
for nothing, oblivious to the traffic.
Rickshaws and trucks were darting in and out, back and forth. I just sat there in my rickshaw, hanging on
for dear life, with the biggest grin on my face. I turned to Kathy and said, “You know, my
sister Cathy would have a nervous breakdown after five minutes of this.” She replied, “So would Geri Melberg.” (Her stepmother.)
After a delightful white-knuckle ride of great peril, the
traffic became too bad and we pulled over.
Everyone got out of the rickshaws and we started walking down toward the
river. Walking turned out to be even
more perilous because we were no longer protected by the rickshaw and its
driver’s ability to dart in and out. Now
we were moving targets and had to dodge cattle, bicycles and people ourselves!
We finally got to the bank of the river, where we climbed
down some large stone steps in the dark.
Below, was one of the cremation sites, and we were told not to take
photos of the cremation.
Some of the steps disappeared under a crag of rocks and
mud and the going got rough. The guides
were helping the women find a safe path.
I darted past, telling Sujay that I was a mountain goat in my past
life. We listened to our city guide talk
about the town while watching the cremation site a while. The cremations are always done by the senior
man of the house, and the women are not allowed to watch. Afterward, we all got on a boat and three
guys started rowing us down the river to the North.
In the dimness of the late evening, we watched what we
could until we saw the site of a large religious celebration. This was the closing ceremony for the
festival for Durga I wrote about earlier.
There were thousands of people chanting and singing, and there were two
stages. On the center stage, a
priest-like guy took turns chanting and waving smoke and fire pots around. Below, five other priests echoed his
movements on the second stage.
It was quite magical to see.
After the ceremony, we rowed back out into the
river. There, we lit tiny candles
sitting in what looked like decorative cupcake papers. The cupcakes were purchased by our guides
from a cute little girl.
We were told that we could
make a wish or prayer to Mother Ganges and put the lit candle into the
river. Having felt nothing special or
sacred here in the holy city of the Hindus, I wished and prayed for enlightenment.
Eventually, we were taken back to our starting point,
walked back to the rickshaws, and made our way to the bus, and back to the
hotel for the night.