Varanasi – Kolkata – Nepal…
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Hello friends!
We are currently in Nepal, and loving it, but I’ll back up a bit to give some general impressions of our last few days in India.
Varanasi was what we expected all of India to be like – distinctly Hindu, with temples everywhere; full of cows and water buffalo on the streets; hot as hell; outrageously poor, and smelling of animal and human excrement everywhere. It is a place that makes you recognize how lucky we are at home, but it also makes you conscious of things about yourself that you do not like to admit are part of your makeup – we can not live like the people of Varanasi. They are miserably poor, yet they are not miserable. They have very little education, but they know how to do things we have forgotten – like how to grow crops, how to build your own house, and how to survive on the necessities of life and be thankful. Our Western ways have made us weak – we can not live the way these people live every day. The actions of daily life are carried out in public everywhere here – going to the bathroom, finding food, killing your meat, cooking your meals, washing your body, worshipping your Gods, and finding somewhere to sleep is all done on the streets or the ghats.
