The Ganga

We arrive to Varanasi, one of the holiest and sacred cities in India. Varanasi's architecture is beautiful and every building along the Ganges river has its own unique touch to it. The city is along one side of the river only due to flooding that occurs during the monsoon season. Our everyday itinerary was packed with temples and amazing site seeing. I have never seen a city in India, up till now, with temples located in every corner, on every street, where ever you walk you are guaranteed to see a temple. When we went to these temples I noticed the reaction and rituals the Indians would do. In every temple it amazed me how much affection they had towards the God or deity that was under the temple. They would ring bells, throw money, and give gifts at the temples as part of their worship. It amazed me to see so much faith and it was so heart touching to see people having such a strong belief that when everything else failed their faith is what kept them motivated and allowed them to move forward.

Every evening there is a ritual along the Ganga the natives preform to say their goodbye to the sun. Every single night a HUGE crowd forms along the river as people sit on boats in the Ganga and watch this beautiful ritual. When we first arrived to the Ghat this ritual is performed we were bombarded with sellers. Most of them were little kids trying to sell anything from face stamps, postcards, to inflatable blow whistles that they would blow in your face to grab your attention. When we were on the boat a little boy named Khudar got on and used his charm to sell us his products. Little did we know he sure did charm us and got a few of our business. I looked at his postcards but did not see any that I liked but he was so cute that I wanted to give him money, so instead of buying a postcard I offered him some rupees. He caught me by surprised and said "Money no Ma'm just buy something, money no." Khudar was so determined to sell his products which made me realize how important this business is to this eleven or twelve year old boy. I thought to myself at 11 or 12 years old I was concerned about my Polly pocket dolls or whether or not I could stay past my bedtime to watch one more TV show. While I was concerned with silly unreasonable things, this boy was concerned about selling his products in order for his family to provide food on the table and live to see another day. Luckily we ran into Khudar another day and we had the honor to hang out with him all day. He sure did make that day very interesting and hilarious. I thank Khudar for opening up my eyes and making me realize how much I want to help out the kids in India to prosper in life so they would not be stuck being a seller or beggar for the rest of their lives. I wish him the best of luck and hope he grows to be an even more amazing, loving person than he already is.