Ganges Blues

Factory sludge, raw sewage, and thirty thousand human corpses: Writer Chuck Thompson visits the sacred Ganges River in Varanasi, India

Writer Chuck Thompson harbours a nasty secret: although an intrepid reputation is vital to any working travel writer’s CV, the truth is that vast parts of the world scare the hell out of him. In this exclusive extract from his book To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, lies and the art of extreme tourism, Thompson visits Varanasi in India and explores the life-giving waters of the Ganges.

The sacred city of Varanasi on the Ganges River had been the biggest source of my pre-trip worries. Its filth is legendary among world travellers – back home, India-travel veterans had advised Joyce and I to pack pairs of ‘Varanasi shoes,’ throwaways that would become so dung encrusted in the befouled streets that they could simply be tossed when we left town. The nurse at the travel clinic had involuntarily flinched when she saw Varanasi on my itinerary. With no further consultation, she scribbled ‘Immodium’ and an antibiotic called ‘Azithromycin’ on her notepad.

On the day we arrive, the local paper runs a front-page story reporting that two young men have been arrested trying to sneak twenty-found hundred detonators into Varanasi. There’s also an op-ed piece about the American and British governments’ recent travel advisories urging their citizens to avoid large sections of India. As I’ve previously noted, these exaggerated State Department advisories are most often written in the hysterical hand of ass-covering government bureaucrats issuing blanket pronouncements that will allow them to say, ‘I told you so’ in response to any calamitous act of God, man, or Muslim. But they also give offense to foreign nationals around the world, and the aforementioned op-ed writer is understandably annoyed that these official warnings undermine the upbeat image India wishes to project to travellers and investors. He writes a nice piece, but somewhat working against his argument is a story on the same page bearing the headline, ‘Smash and Grab: Gurkhas and Gujjars are united by the language of violence.’

Despite the Gurkhas, Gujjars, and twenty-found hundred detonators, nothing explodes during our stay. For sheer fright value, Varanasi proves anticlimactic. It’s no more dirty, crowded or overwhelming than any other large Indian city.

Not that it’s disappointing . Perhaps more than any other city on the planet, Varanasi reveals a fresh jaw-dropper around every corner: a naked child in a doorway; a steaming cow flop in front of a diamond shop; a tumble-down shelter serving as a home for ten; a lungful of woody incense; an explosion of gold, red, purple, and indigo fabric, a bearded mystic crawling on his knees; the pentatonic notes of a sitar raga; a limbless beggar; a shrine devoted to a monkey deity; an apartment entryway overflowing with bangles and flash, yet another self-contained universe of beliefs and superstitions and misery and coping. Every year, thousands of Westerners come to Varanasi in search of personal enlightenment, but the place is such a chaotic mess that the only way you could find yourself here is by accident. I may not ever return but if I do it’ll be with extra memory for my camera, not an extra pair of shoes.

It turns out the only thing to be afraid of in Varanasi is the water. Described by the Economist as a ‘cloudy brown soup of excrement and industrial effluent,’ the slow-moving Ganges River is the one attraction that lives up to the hyperbole.

The product of factory sludge, raw sewage, and thirty thousand human corpses disposed of in its waters every year, the Ganges at Varanasi is a gusher of modern sins. According to world health standards quoted in that Economist story, 500 fecal coliform bacteria per 100 millilitres of water is considered safe; in the Ganges near Varanasi, 1.5 million fecal coliform bacteria have been measured. This being India, the toxic count naturally does nothing to discourage sixty thousand Hindu devotees from performing ablutions in the chocolatey Ganges cesspool each day. Submerged in the noxious mix, they lather, swim, play, and ever guzzle with devotional relish. Shockingly, dysentery, polio, typhoid, and other waterborne ailments are common along the river.

The question most often asked by foreigners in Varanasi is: if the Ganges is so sacred, why do Indians treat it like a toilet? I put the matter to almost every local I meet, but the only reasonable explanation comes from an attractive, well-dressed woman named Neelima, a video production manager from Delhi working in Varanasi as part of a documentary crew.

‘The river, like Hinduism, is all-inclusive,’ Neelima tells me. ‘ Just because it’s religious doesn’t mean other things are excluded from it. In the Ganges, the entire cycle of life and death is celebrated. In the Hindu view, everything in the world is connected to religion. Even pollution. Why are these people drinking this water? Because it’s from the Ganga Mother who encompasses all life and excludes nothing, good or bad.’

If she doesn’t convince me to go for a spiritually replenishing backstroke in Mother Ganga, I do appreciate Neelima’s insight. But I still worry about the butt coffee drifting down the river on its way to its sacred destiny mingling with the water that will be used to rinse the vegetables in the restaurant where Joyce and I will be crossing our fingers and eating lentils and spinach curry tonight.

From the Book TO HELLHOLES AND BACK: Bribes, Lies and the Art of Extreme Tourism by Chuck Thompson. Copyright © 2009 by Chuck Thompson. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company, LLC. The book is available from Amazon.co.uk. For more information, visit: www.chuckthompson.com