The burning of the bodies

A little background on Varanasi:
- Varanasi is an extremely holy city located on the banks of the Ganges river in Northern India.
- People from all over and from all castes come to Varanasi to die ... and after they die their bodies are burned on ghats near the river and their ashes are thrown into the Ganges.
- There are 30 main sewer systems that empty into the Ganges in the 7km that flow by Varanasi.
- For every 100mL of water from the Ganges there are 1.5 MILLION particles of fecal matter.
- Hindus believe that bathing in the Ganges washes them of sin and you can see tons of people bathing in the river on a daily basis.

Heather and I slept in a bit today (the first time we were permitted to sleep past 6am in the last 2 days) and then headed out to explore Varanasi. Our first thought - why is everyone here dressed like an effin hippie? CUT YOUR HAIR - GET A JOB! Our second thought - holy crap, it is ridiculously hot. We went to breakfast (I had chai with museli and curd - delicious!) and half way through we were dripping with sweat. Our third thought - it is way to hot to be Western clothes ... we need to get some some looser fitting gear. Now, we are both dressed like hippies. We wandered through the ridiculously narrow alleyways of the old city and fought the congestion of cows (yes - cows actually DO wander the streets here), motorbikes, tons of people and even funeral processions (bodies carried on bamboo stretchers). Although this is supposed to be the "touristy" area we would go blocks upon blocks without seeing another white person and all the signs/stores are for locals. The streets are offensively dirty ... you can't go a block without seeing garbage, cow shit, people laying on the ground, human piss/fecal matter and the stains of paan (bettle nut chewing stuff that makes horrible red stains that look like blood smears). But for some reason it doesn't bother us. India is unapologetic ... it is what it is and you've got to respect it. We've heard mixed accounts of India from all sorts of travellers and I must admit I was a little worried, but so far I love it here. It's the complete opposite end of the spectrum from life back home and its exactly what I was looking for when I envisioned this trip.
Okay, focus Kate ... so we wandered the alleyways and shops and bought new digs and then we met a girl named Sunshine (hippies - they're everywhere!) who has been in India for the past 5 months. She's given us the lowdown on all the cities, activities, etc. Who needs a guide book? Lonely Planet's got nothing on this girl! We walked down to a ghat (pier like structure on the water) to watch a ceremony in the early evening (lots of fire, candles, singing) and on our way back we passed by the Marinkarka Ghat. This is the ghat where the cremations take place. We stopped and witnessed 5 funeral processions walk up to the river, cleanse the body in the river water and then burn the bodies. The eldest son places the body on burning embers and lights the fire/brush under the body. Each body has its own little fire so the men of the family (the women are "too emotional" and are not allowed to attend the cremation) stand around the fire. There is no smell of burning flesh (which I kind of expected) but there is ash that rains down ... like in the movie Schindler's List. The shroud on one body (the bodies of covered in white shrouds) fell and exposed a foot and the foot was sticking out of the fire and relatively untouched by the flames so it looked like an actual foot (instead of charred flesh). Crazy - only in India. Although we were face to face with this rather gruesome event, we were rather stoic. Everyone acted very matter-of-fact about the whole event, which took out most of the emotional element of the funeral. Also, the sheer number of cremations was hard to grasp. We saw 5 in a 20 minute period and there are on average 200 bodies burned per day. I guess it's hard to get emotional when there are other bodies queuing up for your burning spot.