Holy City/Holy Cow

We've spent the last couple of days walking and wandering around Varanasi trying to fathom a culture that is so old and so far removed from ours that it's a little overwhelming.
We went looking for a famous lassii shop called the blue lassii. Lassis are a yogurt shake made with fresh fruit. You see them milking the cows by hand in the alleys in the mornings. Anyhow we found it down by the main burning ghat where they burn 400 people a day beside the river. The shop was a blue hole in the wall which we happily shared with a couple of French girls. The owner sat out front on the street making lassii and every so often another dead body went rushing past on a bamboo stretcher. These streets are tiny, pedestrians and cows only, so those dead bodies were very close.
Got lost looking for a tea shop and ended up in the home of a perfumerier. We had to get past the cows in the front room to his workshop where we spent a fragrant hour drinking 6 spice chai tea and sampling exotic essential oils.
Another young man delighted in smothering us with luxurious silks and kashmiri pashminas until they were all around us in luminescent piles.
The quintessential thing to do in Varanasi is a boat ride on the Ganges at sunrise. Bry wasn't too happy at the 5.30am start but it was certainly a memorable sight. While the sun rose over the East bank of the Ganges thousands of pilgrims came down to perform ritual washing at the West bank ghats overlooked by centuries old temples and palaces. Up to 60000 people wash in the river every day, raw sewerage runs in to it and don't even think about the dead bodies. I wouldn't let Chico swim in there! We watched a class of kids having their swimming lessons at the ghats this morning!
And then there's another thing Varanasi is famous for its scammers and circling sharks, the corrupt tuktuk and taxi drivers who just want to take you for a ride. Brian gets a little gruff with them sometimes. Yet for every bad tuktuk driver there's one's who are friendly and helpful.
While I am struggling with some aspects of Varanasi- the hygiene, the street living and the proximity of the dead, Bryan is struggling with the fact that as a sacred Hindu city there is no beer for sale. Although I have to say he has been offered hashish, opium and happy lassis, just not beer. No one offers me anything but scarves.
One last Varanasi story. I was people watching while Brian was getting a sim card and noticed wailing coming from a parked ambulance. Within minutes a bamboo stretcher was built on the ground and the body was off to the burning ghat.
Watching the living and the dying in Varanasi and trying to understand a way of life far removed from New Zealand. I'm definitely not there yet but you'd think I should be able to cope with the cow poo on my shoes.

Namaste Sandy