Mirzapur and Varanasi

Well as soon as James left, mum, Aled and Bron arrived. We spent a short weekend in Alibag, cut short by the need to pack and be off on a long journey to Mirzapur (dad's cousin - Chinki's place). The place was a palace with peacocks and pheasants roaming in the grounds. Chinki had a fantastic fruit and vegetable garden, with almost every type I could think of, and a dairy so the majority of the food was as fresh as it gets, save eating it covered in soil and worms! Christmas eve, day and Boxing day were spent in a wildlife sanctury. On arrival we split into groups and went off in 2 open-top jeeps on a trail through the forest before sunset. Aled, Bron, mum and Vinoo uncle had two tigers approaching the road, only to be scared off by excited surrounding jeeps. The animals have now become quite used to the jeeps and come very close so we managed to see a beautiful range including: kingfisher, wild hog, peacocks, monkeys, vultures and many types of deer. For Christmas day the hotel which we were staying in organised a barbeque and traditional Indian folk dancing, which was fantastic and so exciting we couldn't help getting drawn in to join! Mirzapur is just a short distance from the Ancient city, Varanasi, one of the first cities in India (if not the world). Being located on the Ganges, it is a very holy place, filled with brilliant temples. The stone masons are strongly associated with the area, so the temples were covered in carved statues of gods and goddesses as well as animals associated with them, dancers and many other ornamentations. The main tourist area was filled with narrow little streets with stalls all over the place and almost anything available to buy. We headed down to the river along with all the other tourists and all the people heading to sprinkle ashes, or hoping for the curing of their illnesses, or simply hopping for blessings. People travel from miles away just to visit the river. We went on a small boat down the river and where told about all the ghats which have been built along the river bank. There was one dedicated to the washer men, and hence we saw several people washing clothes there, but I'm sure this number is greatly reduced since the convenience of washing machines. We didn't go all the way down to the burning ghats, as we could see a cremation was going on at the time. Bodies are carried all the way through Varanasi to get to these ghats whilst calls to Rama are made. When the boat turned around we each had a chance to row along the ganges, although none of us handled the strain of both oars! Chinki's husband is in the carpet industry and so we visited his factory and saw all the fascinating stages involved in carpet making, right from the plotting out of the design and the obtaining of fuel, to the buffing of the final products and the processing of waste products.