Life on the river

An early morning boat ride is definitely the way to get a taste of what living on the edge of the Ganges river means in Varanasi. A bit like sanctioned voyeurism, it is one of the main activities that is recommended in the city for tourists. I must admit I enjoyed the morning trip more than the evening boat ride, in part because the riverside seemed a bit calmer as everyone was going about their usual morning activities. Families and individuals wading into the water at one of the many ghats to become ritually clean (despite the fact that the water is anything but). Wooden boats floating in the water waiting for tourists to schedule a ride. Washer men out scrubbing sheets and laying them to dry on the concrete steps, creating a patchwork of colors. Some sadhus (holy men) sitting down by the edge for a morning meditation. Pot washers and net menders getting to work. The men at the cremation grounds waiting for the first demand for their services and wood. Just a town getting down to daily life despite the enormous number of people who pass through each year.

Devils Circuit

Last weekend we drove two hours to get to the outskirts of Delhi to take part in the Devils Circuit - a mud run/obstacle course that occurs twice a year here. The drive was so long because we had to get out to the construction site for Wave City, after all where else could you lay down a 5 km track, dig holes, make several pits of mud and in general make a mess of a space? A construction site has the added benefit of already coming with some of its own obstacle like the giant concrete pipes we clambered over and ran through. There we about 12-15 different obstacles to get across, although the benefit of participating in the non-competitive section was that it didn't matter if we chose not to do some. I generally did one section of an obstacle and then skipped the two repeats that followed. I was surprised to find that it wasn't as strenuous of exercise as I had anticipated (perhaps because I walked around too much of it), but I definitely came home covered in mud and with bruises just about everywhere.

Photo op in the middle of the race...Why not? We're not really competing.

We had a group of about 20 teachers and spouses that joined up to do the race together. As if having that many foreigners in one group wasn't enough to attract a lot of attention we also decided to try to win the costume contest (a successful endeavor) - which resulted in us wearing tiger hats, pinning tails to our back and painting some stripes onto our faces. In a way I liked that better...at least we earned the attention we got instead of it just coming our way for existing. It was definitely a lot of fun to go through the race with so many other people, and to be able to identify our group so handily from across the course: "Go tigers!" Good dirty fun for sure.

Nice and clean before the race

After the muddy run

I even ended up on the banner of their face book page! I must admit, the hats have definitely made it easier to find pictures that involve our group!

Real Estate Office

Today I went out to an area that is being developed as a "smart city" for an obstacle course/mud run (more on that at a later date perhaps, but where else but a construction site could you dig pits and make large patches of mud?). Considering that they began in 2011 I can't say that there is much there to encourage people to think about moving out there. It is most definitely still a construction site. About the only thing that appeared complete was the one acre gardens that the different areas will be built around. In no way does it look anything like their advertisements. However, what I found most interesting was that as we were driving out I noticed the real estate "offices" where you could buy into the building, prepaying for an apartment in the development. I just have to ask, would you really trust a real estate agent that works out of a tent on the side of the road?

River obstacles

Our wooden row boat bumps into something with a loud thump. I look over the side and see a bamboo structure floating in the water, a section still solid with mud resembles several arms outreached. A bit of cloth is wrapped around the base. This is what remains of a statue of Durga that got dropped into the river yesterday. It was hard not to notice the groups of devotees that came clapping and chanting their way down the steps of a ghat yesterday evening as we sat to watch the aarti. A group seemed to descend every 5-10 minutes, sometimes one right after another, carrying one to four statues painted up and dressed in finery. The statues started as small as your arm and extended to one and a half the height of the men trying to navigate their way down the steps without endangering their holy cargo. At the bottom they loaded the statue into a boat and set off onto the Ganges river to continue their ceremony for several hours before placing the statue in the Ganges and allowing it to float away. Turns out my visit to Varanasi coincided with the Durga puja.