Sarnath (India)

June 19, 2021

Sarnath (India)

From my diary (February 2017)

I have just got off the auto-rickshaw that has brought me from Varanasi to Sarnath, almost an hour’s ride covering just 10 kilometres, in the most hellish traffic I have ever seen in my life. I arrived in Varanasi two days earlier, on 5 February, after a night spent in a small hotel near Indira Gandhi Airport in New Delhi, where my flight from Kuala Lumpur had landed.

Varanasi (or Benares, as it used to be called), one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities of the world, is also one of the most compelling places I have ever visited. The location of the hotel where I spent the last two nights, on the bank of the Ganges in the middle of the old town, no doubt contributed. The moment I left the chaotic road in the newer town where the taxi had dropped me, to slip into the narrow alley of the old town that led to the hotel, I was transported. A few metres from the large open courtyard of the hotel flowed the Ganges, which must be five or six hundred metres wide this time of the year. On the opposite bank, sand and vegetation, and nothing more. To the right of the entrance door of the hotel are steps leading down to the ghat, the wide steps on the bank, which in turn lead directly down to the river. Between the buildings lined up along the river and the ghat, there is enough space for people to mill around.

To wake up, open the door of my room, and find the wide shining Ganges before me! The Buddha must have looked upon it so many times during his life. He must have bathed in it and crossed it repeatedly during his long journeys around Northern India...