“The road to Varanasi was just a mass of honking vehicles: these presenting a thoroughly exotic and marvellous helter-skelter. The buildings either side of the highway were either in a state construction, demolition, or neglect; and dust everywhere. I did not understand how great loss of life, not to mention less fatal accidents, did not happen. I could not adequately describe the scene, I had experienced nothing like it, for no past experience prepared me for the reality. This was no illusion. Dust, dirt and vehicle noise everywhere. If it wasn’t for the fear it elicited one could almost glory in it. And we were yet to enter the city.”
The quote above was extracted from Post 8 – Day 2 ‘Varanasi, and a good bread roll (Pt 2)’. And though the chaotic hubbub of humanity that greeted me was a ‘culture shock’ of no small dimension the reality of Varanasi was nothing less than the most spectacular of landscapes. It was everything you had feared and loved. But most of all it projected a spectacular and beguiling intoxication, one which all these years later, has not washed clean.
And like so many before me I found myself at the ghats by the banks of the Ganges.
Geoff Williams 