About a week ago I arrived in Benares/Varanasi. A very strong town, India’s most holy city, situated along the Ganges. Some claim it is the oldest city of the world. All Hindus wish to die and be cremated here, as it should be good for their karma. The atmosphere in this town is confronting. Walking through the narrow streets people pass by carrying dead bodies to be cremated in the fires along the Ganges, singing ‘Ram Ram satya hei’, meaning ‘God God, this is the truth’. The senses get overwhelmed by the smell of cows, pollution, flowers, incense, open sewages and the burning of bodies. After beautiful and pink Jaipur this all is quite a lot to take. Eight years ago I visited this place during my first travel to India, promised myself never to go back. But sometimes life goes in different ways then one plans…

My friends from Belgium, Peet en Miek, have been here for a month now. Every year they cycle from south to north India, 170 km a day when they are on the road. I came to Benares to visit them, share experiences and time together. They love this town. There must be something in the air here as I can think of no rational reason why to like being here, but every day I fall asleep, totally fulfilled, and wake up in the morning with a lust for life.

Yesterday we went with a little boat onto the Ganges at 6 o’clock in the morning to see the sunrise; it was beautiful to be on the water that early. I took some photo’s, will try to put them on the website later. Afterwards we had yoga, like every day, from 8 until 10 o’ clock. We have a busy schedule, Peet and Miek are very active people. They take me to the best restaurants (they have their own restaurant in Belgium, in the Arden mountains, so I am accompanied by experts), visiting friends and they are trying to buy land on the other side of the river to build an ashram, that is like an Indian monastery. So I go with them, it is an interesting process to buy land in a country where so little is organized and where there is a lot of fraud. You have to know the right people, like with many things in life, and most of all you need a lot of patience, wanting things to go faster delays the process. The slower you move the faster you go is the golden rule. Then we have Hindi classes, from a young Indian teacher at the other side of the river, where we sit under the veranda in the countryside, eating papaya, away from the busy town, learning some new sentences. So much to do when even a day of doing completely nothing here is interesting as so much is continuously happening around you, a life so overwhelming, unexplainable. You find yourself in situations that you could have never imagined, meet the most eccentric people, see things that go beyond your craziest fantasies.

Being in India feels like not being in a different country, on a different continent. It is more like being on another planet.