Making a human connection - to others and to yourself - seldom comes with more depth and power than on the banks of India’s Ganges, a spiritual vortex of Hinduism.

Down By The River

Being rowed through the pastel colours of dawn on the Ganges, the sweet smell of incense suddenly mingles with something just as sweet, but somehow different. Rama, my rowing guide, brings us around the corner of a pale-yellow ghat, and there it is: The Ghat of the Dead. This is where all of India’s devout Hindus wish to be cremated. To die in Varanasi and have your ashes strewn on the timeless and slow-moving Ganges is an auspicious last rite that will make the passing into the next life a good one.

“Prayer is not asking. It is the longing of the soul.” Gandhi

In this age of jammed photocopiers, jammed traffic, and generally jammed lives, I needed some spiritual peace and quiet - something we often yearn for but rarely achieve. As a child, reading Kipling’s and Twain’s spellbinding accounts of this magical city, I had always fancied finding my way there – somehow - on life’s meandering course. Now that I was here, would I find what I was looking for?

Varanasi, or Benares in Hindi, was a nondescript fishing village in northern India before a man – a mortal – named Siddhartha came to a nearby temple as Lord Buddha and blessed the people and the river that gave them life so many centuries ago. Buddhism has long since given way to Hinduism in these parts, but the lingering auspiciousness has only intensified.

Today, Varanasi away from the river remains nondescript, even in its modern form. Slums, decrepit colonial homes, factories, a huge university, dirt and bettlenut-spit mingle to unimpress.

But Hindu devotees and devoted travellers alike know to ignore much of the city itself as it is the many individually named ghats that are the true lure. These steep, crumbling, uneven steps are each a platform for Hindu pilgrims to reveal their prayers. All the ghats lead down to the same source and effluence of life - the Holy River Ganges.

Despite having become horribly polluted over the last few years from raw sewage, cremated (or partially cremated) bodies, and dangerous pesticide run-offs from upstream, the Ganges still holds the power to cleanse souls.

“I want nothing to do with a religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth and ignorance.” Nehru

My first impression of this spiritual vortex is a distinctly ugly one (however, it seems that the closer you get into the heart of the city, the more the city gets into your heart, blinding you to its mange). I have just arrived on the night train from Agra (Taj Mahal). As I am buffeted out of the dingy station by a sea of shouting and waving rickshaw drivers, I come face-to-face with a huge billboard advertising near-priceless jewelry – big and baubly, meant for ostentation.

And there, on the crumbling sidewalk at the foot of the billboard is a ragged family sprawled out in a malnourished stupor. It is only when you see something so socially irreconcilably that the cliché of India being a land of extremes takes on a fresh immediacy.