Fly to Varanasi, a sacred pilgrimage city for Hindus and Buddhists, renowned for its temples and shrines.

Witness the Ganga Aarti ceremony at dusk by the Ganges River. This spiritual ritual includes chanted prayers, rhythmic drumming, and lantern-bearing priests performing a farewell to the gods and goddesses.

this may be canceled due to the pilgrimage. yes canceled usually 40 or 50,000 people show up but with a pilgrimage it’s overwhelming. We’ll see it tomorrow from a boat.



Varanasi is considered an auspicious place to die in Hinduism, believed to offer an instant path to salvation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varanasi

The city of about 3 million people is vibrant with a history of 5000 years all complicated history and probably very well covered in the Wikipedia article above. The guide spent probably an hour maybe an hour and a half telling us about the history the religions, more history, more religions. I tuned out after a while.

The city looks much richer well much more wealthy than previous cities we’ve been to. Our leader suggest I reserve judgment.

In the evening, we went to a particularly interesting Hindu temple that has a map of India in marble carved into the ground to scale. He pointed out all the countries all the areas in India, Pakistan Afghanistan, etc.. This was part of Mahatma Gandhi, trying to unify the thinking.

and we went to another Hindu temple where there was massive amount of chanting and bell ringing. I had to leave my head, started ringing from all those bells.