Varanasi is one of the oldest and most spiritual cities in the world. Varanasi is famous for burning Hindu people next to the Ganges when they died.

I had a walk the whole day on the ghats of Varanasi. Ghats are places, where people can bath in the Ganges or where Hindu people are burned after their life. I went up and down and was breathless.

In the morning I first went to Manikarnika Ghat and saw many people getting burned. Impressive and cold shower on my body. Impressive. This was the place, where life ends. This was the place, where Hindu people are “reincarnated”. I have not seen this before and have to digest the seen things. Very interesting… Very different.

I went through all ghats, saw people bathing in the Ganges, people washing their clothes, cows bathing, many small boats, saw ash flying in the dirty, dirty Ganges and a lot of other things. The water in the Ganges is at the moment very very low. You can see it in the pictures, that it looks like a “desert”. In July, when the monsum is coming, the water rises up to 12 meter (!) and everything gets flooded.

Lonely Planet says, that there are 1.500.000 bacterias on 100 ml in the Ganges. Everything, which is above 500 bacterias/100 ml is dangerous. Ganges is really a dark soup and very, very dirty. Very dirty.

In the evening I went by boat to a ceremony on one ghat. It was very interesting - also did Pooja. Will see if I will get up tomorrow at 5.30 AM to have a morning boattrip.

Everything is fine… Weather is quite hot, it’s about 40 degrees Celsius. I drunk about 7 liter of water, good so.

Trying to get in contact with a working-colleague - Pooja S. She comes from India, works in the Netherlands within the same organization at the same company as I do. I am working with her in the area of 2.0 and internet. She inspired me a lot in doing this trip and made me interesting in the culture of india. Well… lets see what she is going to tell ;)