Varanasi street life
There's more to Varanasi than dead people, ghats, and the Ganges (well, in theory I guess). We explored Varanasi's labyrinth of tiny, winding streets and saw a lot of interesting things. You have to keep your wits about you, though, because every 5 seconds a cow, corpse, or motorbike comes around the corner and charges full force towards you. You've got to press yourself against the wall to avoid being run down.
Here's Tanja standing in the middle of the street. Now imagine a corpse being carried past and you'll have an idea of what it's like:
Very twisty and narrow:
Pickle store:
Silk shop:
Produce market:
Fruit stand:
Betelnut vendor:
Basket shop:
Restaurant:
Bead shop:
3 kids (Charise took this photo, but it's so beautiful I wanted to include it!):
posted by Suzie at 12:00 PM
1 Comments:
Your description of walking on the streets of Varanasi reminded me of walking through the similarly narrow streets of old Calcutta. When I was on my last trip I told my relatives that I wanted to go visit old Calcutta and they were not very amused...it seems my family that lives there never goes there. So I went with the family's driver and we walked through the narrow allys. I had to keep an eye on my camera in case someone wanted to wander off with it, an eye looking for good shots, an eye on the ground looking for giant cow dumps, an eye around me looking out for random people carrying big things on their head that might take me out, an ear for car/bus horns, an ear for bicyclists, and an eye for wayward cows. On top of that my nose was assaulted with all kinds of random food smells. That day I learned what my dad meant when he said in India you walk with one eye on the ground looking out for shit and one eye looking in front of you.
9:32 AM
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