The eternal flame and Varanasi

City of the dead

Varanasi is probably the most exotic place on earth, there are not many places on earth where you can find corpses being cremated in the open.

The cremations never stop, there is never an instant where there is not a body being cremated. I saw with my own eyes a corpse burning from beginning to end until it was just ash. 

There is a vibrant and cheerful atmosphere at the fires. The Hindus have a very different view of death than we do.

The burning ghat in Varanasi, the burning piles of wood to the left are bodies burning. Note the family members standing around and watching. At the top of the image is a group of family members immersing a body in the Ganges before placing it on the a fire.

I was not allowed to take any photos of the burning ghat (ghat being a word for a flight of stairs leading to a body of water), but I secretly took the images on this page from a hidden location.

Look at the cow inside the area where they burn the bodies. Sometimes the cows might eat some human flesh, also stray dogs and crows come and eat pieces of charred meat and bone. 

 The bodies are burnt so the soul can escape the cycle of reincarnation, some bodies are not burnt. The holy, the sick, the unmarried, the children and pregnant women are already holy, so they do not get burnt at the ghat their bodies get sunk in the Ganges. Women are not allowed at the ceremony because they believe that if someone cries at the cremation then the deceased will not go to nirvana.

 The piles of wood above are for burning the corpses, the richer you are the better quality wood you get, the super rich from the upper castes buy pure sandal wood to burn their dead.

The picture above is of the scale that weighs the wood for the burning of the corpses.

There is a fire burning inside the main temple of the ghat, it is called the eternal flame. They never let it die, and it hasn't died in five thousand years(or so the story goes) The cremation fires of the upper castes get lit directly from the eternal flame in separate areas enclosed with a cage and only members from their own caste burn them so members from the lower castes never touch them even in death.

People bath in the water just a few hundred meters away from the burning ghat, I saw people drinking the water from the Ganges too. 

Early the one morning I was there I walked to the burning ghat and I saw a naked man sitting and cooking food in a pot on one of the cremation fires that was still embers. He was reaching into the fire and picking pieces of charred flesh out and eating it. The family of the deceased was still in the area and they saw what he was doing but did not care. Anyone who feels disgusted or offended by this should remember that to the Hindus we have this strange idea that the dead is sacred!

Photo of photos of the dead before cremation. 

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