At Benares, the River Flows North

Something I didn’t know about Varanasi (Benares) until I visited there: at Benares, the Ganges runs north.

Benares is the great grotesque shrine of Hinduism where the faithful bathe each morning in what appears, to any detached observer, to be one of the filthiest rivers on the planet (it does not look anything like this)—while just a few yards away, others burn human bodies over open crematory fires. How could anything human get caught up in any spectacle so grotesque?

Here’s a partial answer: the flow of the river. Through most of its length, the Ganges flows from northwest to southeast. But just shy of Benares, the river swings straight north. That means that when you plunge into the river at dawn at Benares, you are facing the morning sun (the opposite side of the river, a flood plane, is virtually empty). Apparently what we have here is a tradition of sun-worship that long precedes Hinduism or indeed, even India itself.

We did indeed observe (but not participate in) the spectacle of bathing at Benares. They row you out in little boats. On our day the ratio of tourists to bathers was about one to one, but it’s an eye-popper anway. Our guide says the water is strong enough to dissolve the unburned bones (male rib-cage; female pelvis) of crematory bodies--ought to take the rust of anvils too, I suspect. And that the pH is 7.8, so strong enough to kill any threatening microbe. I never was very good at biology, so cannot comment. I do wonder, though, about the Maharaja who fancied Benares water so much that he bottled it and took it with him to the coronation of Edward VII.