Dev Deepawali Viewed From a Boat on the Ganges

When I finished looking around the waterfront the previous day, I went to find a place that had advertisements painted all over the waterfront. It was called the Brown Bread Cafe. After a convoluted passage through the narrow alleys of the waterfront area around the ghats of the Ganges, I finally found it. Actually I found two. One was obviously a fake and one may or may not have been the real one. (It is always possible there were more of them hidden around the area and both of these ones were fake.) I made the mistake of asking the people in the one I chose if they were the real one. They were a bit put out and indignantly stated they were the real one. But of course they would say that. I still don't know. For a bakery purportedly opened by a German, I would have thought they wouldn't serve dry bread and other baked goods. But I don't suppose there is any real way to tell except to talk to someone who frequented the real one in the past and knows for sure.

I had dinner there and met a bunch of people who were gadding about Varanasi as well. One was a fellow Canadian and he was staying at a guest house on the waterfront, with a view over the river. I was a bit jealous, but not willing to take on the task of moving all the way down to the waterfront, so I settled for just thinking it would be nice.

He had a line on being able to take a boat ride along the river on the following night, this one. This was going to be the big night of their festival, Dev Deepawali. There was going to be a huge display of lights and candles for the event. However, because of this, boat trips on the river which can normally be had for about 150 rupees were being pegged at 10 times that and more. If that were going to be the case, I was going to content myself with wandering the shore and enjoying the show that way. As it turned out, Gord's guest house put together a boat trip for 250 rupees per person. This sounded very good to me. And I was considerably happier with the prospect since purchasing the new camera the night before. I thought it would be a great night.

But first I needed to figure out what to do with the day. Varanasi has a fort. It's called Ram Nagar. It sounds kind of interesting and I thought I would try to go and see it. I went to the train station and the buses that were nearby. I was given some directions for finding a bus and headed off to try. I proved to be as handy as usual with directions, and I failed to find the right place to catch the bus. It took long enough to figure it out that I decided just to head back down to the riverfront and go for another wander. I had really only seen a small number of the ghats the day before, as I had spent a long time watching the cremations that were taking place.

I got to the river and headed south towards the end of the ghat area. It was very interesting. The architecture is very impressive.

I also watched people doing one of the things that is renowned throughout the world, bathing in the Ganges. The filthy, cremated ash-filled, bacteria from decomposing bodies-filled Ganges. And brushing their teeth using the water from the Ganges. And just generally doing things I couldn't even imagine doing in such unhealthy water. Indian Hindus must have impressive immune systems.

I also got a look at preparations for the evening's displays. There were a lot of painted designs along the river's edge. People were decorating the designs with little tea candles. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful waterfront that evening.

And then it was on to the night. I met Gordon at the Brown Bread Bakery for an early dinner and then we headed to his guest house to get a boat ride on the Ganges among the lights of the Dev Deepawali festival. We began at about 5:30, shortly before sunset. One of the first spots we passed was the burning ghat and, despite it being somewhat disrespectful, I took some photos of the cremations going on.

Nevertheless, the star of the night was the lighting along the edge of the river. And it was spectacular enough to just be able to speak for itself...