Varanasi Favorite Tips by l_joo Top 5 Page for this destination

Street scene (aerial view)

Favorite thing: Here you can look at the road of Varanasi, this road is not the small ghat alleys, this one is the big main road. It was this road along the ghats, in each of the small alleys, you can walk in to search for the river, but be careful, not easy and sometimes you will not find the way.

Street scene

Favorite thing: Perhaps after looking at this street scene, I should keep silence on what happened on the street in my country. I think almost every big or small town of India, the situation of traffics are about the same. Drivers here must learn how to punch the horn more than how to drive properly, what do you think?

Crematorium

Favorite thing: This is a goat eating the flowers that peoples put on the dead people, the moment they dumped into the river, the goat can eat as breakfast perhaps. Then worldwide tourists can take their boat ride here to snap photos insanely, with video cam, digi cam, SLR, compact etc. I was here too, on the central platform looking at all these, 3000 years of tradition unchanged.

Crematorium

Fondest memory: You can see my shadow on the cremation site, the sunlight was strong, good photo opportunity. There's a goat waiting there to eat whatever possible, nobody care, they care more on the fire I guessed. Temperature here was quite high, not so comfortable to stand too long but for taking photos.

Crematorium

Favorite thing: At first I thought to look at such thing was very difficult, but when I was there, I saw they did this endlessly and open to public. I walked here many times to look what they have and I saw some rich peoples performing some cremation rituals of pouring water into the dead people's mouth and while they do this, other peoples busy washing clothes less than 20 feet beside and goats waiting to eat the flowers which they had on the deap people, two peoples busy searching the river nearby this crematorium, for probably valuable stuffs. I put my digital camera close to my jacket partly hidden to snap all the photos.

Going to school

Favorite thing: Picture is a school and young hopeful students are busy going home after class. The reason I upload this picture was the boat boy that morning told me his father died when he was very young, so he could not read write and had to wash plate at small age until now. Now he can speak simple English and he worked for the hotel in the restaurant for some 3000Rs a month but 1000Rs only after new boss came. So he had to take boat as side income, 200Rs for 2 hours of ride and share 50-50 with boat owner.

Somebody's home?

Favorite thing: This picture is perhaps somebody's home, I'm not so sure but I saw so many such scenes in this city. If you want to know what is this, best to ask a local Varanasian. I met a good well educated young man on train, he was a Varanasi born went to New Delhi for study. Told me quite a lot about Varanasi in good fluent English, he loves his country for sure and wanted so eager to ask tourist's opinion about his hometown, so I told him some and we chat for hours, nice man I met.

Varanasian fuel

Favorite thing: If I take a tuk-tuk, the driver most probably will stop at this petrol station for few ruppees of refill. While waiting, I usually take photo, so here is a Varanasi refill picture. One noticeable thing in refill was the pump attendant would pour a small cup of additional 2T oil into the machine somewhere up front, probably some kind of services.

Local inhabitants

Favorite thing: This is one of the local peoples near the ghats, the way they live. Don't ask me what they do here, it just a photo. I like the way the photo look, so I want to share here. You can see inside the door is always very dark, probably they don't switch on lights at day time or some other reasons.

Semi aerial view

Favorite thing: Took this picture on the rooftop of my hotel. This is a good point to shoot good Varanasi photos if you have good strong lenses, but I don't. Houses here almost all built flat top with cement. They don't build Greco-Roman rooftop, very Varanasi perhaps.