The past 2 days have centered on the Ganges.  Yesterday. we rented a boat at 5 am and spent 2 hours on the water watching pujas being performed all along the banks by thousands of people singing, bathing. offering light. incense, food. flowers and water.  We watched the sun come up and cheered the rising of the day with these thousands.  Here are a few pictures I took.  The guys have much better ones and I hope they will post them.

After we came ashore, Juha got invited to a pick up cricket game.  He hit a home run!  (Do they have home runs in cricket?)

Today has been a bit more "somber"? "serious"?  After our regular morning sit. we walked through the streets of Varanasi and along the banks of the Ganges to the burning ghats where they cremate the dead.  We sat for quite a while there, as men carried loved ones on bamboo ladder type stretchers into the river where they bathed the richly draped corpse in the sacred waters of life.  Then too, we were privileged to be allowed to watch families as they uncovered and took pictures of their loved one's face for the last time, and then as they placed the body on a wood pyre and the first born son set fire to him or her.

All around these families, (all men), there are people panning ashes in the river for gold, (women are burned with their gold jewelry), dogs and cows wander, and others are getting haircuts and being shaved.  Some sit and drink chai, gossip and watch the goings on.  Here, death takes place in the middle of life.  Nothing is hidden.  Mikko says the bulk of the mourning is done within the home, and that only men take the bodies to the burning ghats because the cremation and returning all to the One is a joyful occasion and women are much too likely to cry, and if the body/spirit hears the crying, he or she will not want to leave.

We too are this
:)