I can’t seem to get India off of my mind. It has been a place I’ve been aching to get back to for years. Maybe it’s because of the traditional Indian wedding I just photographed or that recently I’ve had a couple of friends who have traveled through there. Regardless, it has been wonderful reading about other people’s reactions and seeing their photos from one of my favorite places in that giant country, Varanasi.
For me, visiting Varanasi was a complete sensory overload. Everyday I was assaulted by so many sounds, smells and colors that I constantly felt in a state of breathlessness trying to keep up with the manic pace of this holy city. My usually impeccable sense of direction was no match for the labyrinth of alleyways and I found it impossible to get use to all the holy cows coexisting and commingling with the people’s daily lives.
Varanasi was a like a pulse, a constant heartbeat, and the flowing epicenter was the Ganges. The big, bubbling, filthy beyond imagination river where people would bathe, wash clothes, spread the ashes from a loved one and pray by its stone shoreline. I spent days down by the river sometimes just wandering and getting lost, sometimes just sitting, not moving, not making photos, just trying to listen. To absorb some of the music that would snake around me from all directions and watching. Feeling very small, very still, while streaks of life and color flew by me. I remembering feeling so obscure yet somehow so connected. I could be anybody, nobody, I was just existing. Just like everyone else.
