The Mother Ganga

Benares is a a place that makes you question everything the Western, rational scientific way of thinking has ever taught you to think.

Built alongside the Ganges River - or the Ganga, as it's known here - pilgrims flock from all over India to cremate their loved ones in Benares's cremation ghat. It's a city built to honor one of the holiest rivers in Hinduism, The Mother Ganga. The Ganga is a goddess, it is a tradition, it is creation, it is destruction... it is impermanence.

Pilgrims bathe in the Ganga, they drink the Ganga, do their laundry in the Ganga, deposit corpses and ashes in the Ganga... Hindus worship everything-Ganga.

Now for something I read in Lonely Planet: The water in the Ganges River contains 60,000 faecal coliform bacteria per 100 ml, 120 times the official limit of 500 faecal coliforms/100ml that is considered safe for bathing. So people are bathing, drinking, doing their laundry and leaving their deceased family members in one of the dirtiest rivers in the world, a river swimming in infection, sewage and industrial waste.

Tell this to a devotee, knee-deep in The Mother Ganga, praising Shiva - The Destroyer - for all that is life and death, and rebirth, and The Cycle... and that devotee will call YOU crazy. What do you mean dirty? This is sacred, this is what life is about.. this IS life. Drinking and bathing in the Ganga can purify your soul of past sins and alleviate all sicknesses.

And it is full of feces.

Juliana and I took a boat ride along the Ganga to watch as the sun rose over Benares. It was surreal - shocking, pulsing, beautiful - it was everything. And at one point, Juliana said, "I can't imagine anything worse than to fall into this river. I would need to be rushed to an emergency room, stat."

I agreed and shivered thinking about all of the disgusting scabies I'd acquire if I just touched this water. Ew.

And then you look up and watch people completely immersed, hands up, tears streaking their faces, so thankful to be in this holiest of holy rivers. Makes you question everything.