The dead of Varanasi

It was 5:10 AM when I started knocking on Sanzio and Giovanni's door. About ten minutes later, I realized there was nothing I could do to wake up our deaf Italian friends. So, my sister and I decided to leave the guesthouse without our volunteer guides to see if we could find what we were looking for on our own.

For two months, we had been catching packed buses and trains around the incredible India. It was enough time to find our way out of a chaotic Mumbai and test our luck crossing the busiest streets of the capital, New Delhi. After surviving our first few perilous dashes through traffic in Rajasthan, we had gone on to experience the colourful Navaratri Festival in Gujarat. Then, we had finally seen the Everest and contemplated the splendid Taj Mahal with our own eyes.

At this point, sharing the streets with cows, rickshaws and bare-footed people had become normal. So had eating spicy food with our hands, protecting ourselves from daring monkeys and using toilets with holes on the floor and no toilet paper.

We then travelled on to Varanasi, the holiest place in the Hindu world. I was particularly curious about the Ganges River and the masses of pilgrims that I would probably encounter there. But, frankly, my sister and I didn't expect to find anything really impressive in that old city.

Shortly after we got there, some rumours put our scepticism in doubt. They said something in that place would blow us away. "At sunrise, head to the river and follow the smoke", was the instruction. That's exactly what we got up to this morning.

After bumping into dodging cow dung and sleeping people along several narrow streets, we finally reached the river. There were different sources of smoke. We aimed at the closest one, which was less than a mile away. As we walked along the riverside, the first sun rays revealed a striking scenario: many people bathing, washing their clothes and brushing their teeth in the Ganges's dark water.

Then a crowd diverted our attention to the exact spot from where the smoke was billowing. It was mostly adults singing around a bonfire. A sign said that taking pictures was not allowed, so I intuitively barged through the crowd and just watched.

A corpse was being cremated. The body was wrapped in an orange cloth and tied to a bamboo litter. His hair and most of the cloth had already disappeared among the flames of the big bonfire. The whites of his eyes first lost their pristine colour, then the eyes themselves their round shape before his skin started to burn and melt.

Only a few steps away, I could feel the heat and smell the roasting flesh. After a while, the macabre spectacle left only ashes and the remains of bone. These were then thrown into the water, and new firewood was brought for the next open-air cremation. I looked around and realized that my sister and I were the only ones shocked.

As I learned later, this Hindu ritual happens hundreds of times every morning in the several burning ghats along the Ganges River. For some families, the wood costs such a fortune that they simply drown the deceased with heavy stones in the holy water. That explains why, in the days which followed, we would continue to spot heads and other human body parts floating in the river.