Varanasi
Moby | 26/6/2006Full on, but really interesting. Had the fortune of not seeing any of the floating bodies in the river up close.
Worst job in the world:
Relocating the bodies that end up on the busy side of the river by dragging or punting them with a rowboat back out into the middle. Babies, kids and pregnant women are not burnt on the ghats as they are considered pure. instead they go into the river w a rock.
People who have smallpox or cobra bite are put on a bananna tree raft and floated down the river.
Summing it up:
Seeing people drinking the ganges water, beside someone washing their cow, beside someone swimming, beside someone washing clothes, another dumping rubbish, people diving under and panning the ashes of the cremated for jewelery. all just downstream from a sewer outfall defies belief!
