Sorry I've been a blog slacker. Here's a recap of my last week.

I spent 8 days in a town called Fatehpur Sikri (where most travelers spend about 2 hours) with Pappu, a local tour guide who helped me explore a bit off the beaten path and became a good friend. I liked Fathepur Sikri with its gorgeous mosque, ruined city and Moghul palace, but mostly enjoyed hanging around with Pappu and his family and friends. Abandoning the tourist trail in favor of some cultural immersion felt like the right thing for me at the time, though I found myself getting restless and missing the companionship of other travelers (specifically, people who can understand more than half of what I say).

Off to Varanasi where I met my friend Lauren, a lovely Kiwi I met in Japan 6 months ago. We explored and got lost in the musty maze of alleys in the Old City but spent most of our time taking in the sights of the city's holy ghats. The city is set on the Ganges River, which is lined with dozens of these ghats (steps leading down to the river) most of which are for bathing. At sunrise and sunset, the ghats are aswarm with people who come to bathe in the river's holy waters, pray, get blessed, get massaged, meditate, read, practice yoga, sell flowers, get a shave, play cricket. In the dawn light illuminating the ghats and the Old City behind it, the atmosphere is palpable.

Varanasi is an auspicious place to die since it is believed that to do so releases one from the karmic cycle of birth and rebirth. (I figured this would mean the streets would be crawling with low-caste people knocking on death's door, but I was surprised to find this not the case.) It is also where many people in India send their dead to be cremated on the city's burning ghats. Just upstream from where hordes of people swim, wash their hair and brush their teeth sits one of these ghats.

Lauren and I spent an hour watching bodies burning at sunset. Towering piles of wood provide fuel for the nearly 100 bodies per day that will be cremated here. Family members (men only) sit on the steps, praying, mourning, but never crying as tears are believed to hinder the release of the deceased's soul. The body is removed from its ceremonial stretcher while still wrapped tightly in a white sheet. Outcaste workers place the body atop a fire where it is consumed by flames over the course of about three hours. The purifed remains are then collected and scattered in the holy river. Pregnant women and babies (because they are considered to already be pure) as well as victims of cobra bites (because of the chance they may only be comatose) are not burned, but rather weighted down with stones tied to ropes and tossed into the river (not sure what a comatose cobra-bite victim would do to save himself in this case). Sometimes the ropes break and bodies surface, but thankfully I did not see any of these.

Watching the burnings, I was surprised to find myself completely unfazed, even when one body's foot fell off and a worker snatched it up and placed it back on the fire somewhere near the poor guy's head. Watching this process was curiously satisfying to me as it confirmed what I've always believed; that the body is merely a shell for our soul. To venerate death by purifying the body and releasing the soul, well, it just makes sense to me. It felt good to leave India after three months with a bit more understanding of this fascinating and often perplexing culture. I'll be back to learn more in the summer, but now, Nepal!

Lauren and I arrived last night in Kathmandu after a long, hot and extremely uncomfortable three-leg journey from Varanasi (overnight train, bus to Nepali border, incredibly uncomfortable 12-hour bus ride on shitty roads to Kathmandu). Within an hour of arriving, Chris came knocking at my door. So good to see him again after three weeks on our own.

First impressions of Nepal: more relaxed than India. Not as dirty. Communication with locals seems easier, even though their English doesn't seem to be as good as in India. Crappy roads underfunded by the corrupt government. Thamel, the tourist hotbed in Kathmandu is a traveler's wet dream. Bars! Clubs! Incredible restaurants! (sushi anyone?) Fantastic shopping! (everything I saw in India but for cheaper) A real grocery store! (with wine!) Fast internet! Cheap North Face knock-offs! And best of all, a gaggle of other travelers. None of this will expand my cultural horizons, but dammit, I'm ready to have some fun. We'll leave for our trek in a few days.