those wandering days.

Up until yesterday I'd only ever been to two funerals in my life. The first was my grandfather's - he was in his 80s and his passing was a relief for most of the family. He’d suffered enough and was ready to go. The second was more of a memorial than a funeral, held at the house of my friend who'd died, on the bluest of blue-sky days. Funky tunes were playing in the backyard, plates of food were spread on the table and people filtered in, mingling, sobbing, embracing and fumbling to make conversation. It was like stepping into the saddest house party in history.

In both cases I didn't get to see the body. My grandfather was sealed tight inside a polished coffin that was lowered with the push of a button on a mechanical pulley into a perfectly measured and dug grave, the manicured grass beside it left vacant for his wife, my nanna.

My friend's body was whisked away on a plane to be buried by his family in Israel, his homeland. Although I never saw it, my imagination would frequently conjure an image of it in my mind's eye - out of nowhere I'd suddenly see him, his body hanging by the neck from a tree by the creek.

The only tangible evidence of his death that I have is a heavy absence and a text message inviting him to lunch that will remain eternally unanswered. I sent it the morning after he died, a few hours after his body was found by a woman on a morning walk with her dog.

Yesterday, almost a year after my friend's death, I witnessed my third funeral. An almost full moon hung above the city of Varanasi as I sat at a vantage point above the burning ghat, one of two designated places beside the holy Ganges river where people come to cremate their family members. Two fellow travellers and I were accompanied to the ghat by Chento, a local who we met at a restaurant during the day and who offered to show us around.

'Twenty-four hour, burning bodies here' Chento stated. He claimed that hundreds of bodies are burnt at the ghat everyday. On this particular night there were over 10 different fires burning below us, sending sparks and smoke into the warm night air. We watched as bodies swaddled in gold and orange fabric were carried to the ghat on bamboo stretchers, and sprinkled with water from the holy river.

There were no women in sight because, as Chento informed us, women have 'normal hearts', not strong hearts like men, and crying is not allowed. 'That way the soul goes in happy way' he said. After all, if one dies and is cremated in Varanasi they are believed to escape the cycle of rebirth and get a golden ticket straight to Moksha, eternal bliss. It should be a happy occasion.

I knew that I would see cremations when I came to Varanasi and that, in part, is what drew me there. I wanted to be confronted with death, perhaps as a bid to understand it more. Although I’d been to funerals before, I’d never really looked death in the face, never seen it with my own eyes. In my part of the world, death is rarely acknowledged. It's a far-away fairytale, something for the old and the ill. When you deny death like that, it’s easy to forget what’s important. Before my friend died I'd taken it for granted that myself and everyone I know would live until their faces were wrinkled and their hair was streaked with grey. Death has a way of putting things in perspective.

I watched as men began to uncover a body, stripping it of the gold and orange fabric, leaving only a layer of pure white cotton. The body was placed on a neatly stacked pile of wood and another layer of logs was placed on top. Once the fire was lit it didn't take long for the whole pile to catch and soon the body disappeared into the crackling flames. It takes 3 hours to reduce a whole body to ashes.

I was expecting to be moved, to be filled with emotion at the sight of such a stark truth, but those bodies were strangers to me and I was just an observer. All I felt was a sense of gratitude for my own body which, for now, is still pulsing with life, still able to let me explore the world, still able to feel.

'I'm lucky to have grown up beside the burning ghat' Chento told us. His house is just behind the ghat and bodies are carried past it everyday on their way to the river. 'Burning is learning, cremation is education.' I was struck by the casual way he talked about death, and by his simple but profound wisdom. 'Every day I see at least one body and I learn what life is, what you have and what you take with you. You come naked, you go naked, all you carry with you is your karma.'

In Search of a Flesh-Eating Holy Man

I flicked through my guidebook and found the page on Varanasi. “Brace yourself,” it said, “Varanasi is one of the most blindingly colourful and unrelentingly chaotic places on earth.” My skin tingled. Bring it on, I thought to myself. I’d heard many stories about Varanasi from other travellers and opinions about it were mixed, but everyone agreed it was one of the craziest places they’ve ever been to. I was keen to see it for myself and on top of that, I had a mission to fulfil there - I wanted to meet an Aghori.

The first time I heard about Aghoris was from a man that I met in north India, named Fred. After the conversation I went, in disbelief, to look them up online. If Aghoris were real, they were unlike any person I’d ever heard of before, like some kind of twisted fairytale character.

My research confirmed everything that Fred had told me. Aghoris, arguably the holiest and most powerful of all holy men and women in India, renunciate worldly pleasures in pursuit of spiritual liberation. Moksha, as it’s called, is the state of death without dying, the experience of reaching heaven without leaving the body. This pursuit is not unique to Aghoris - it’s shared by millions of Sadhus, Yogis and Hindus around India - however, the path that Aghoris choose to reach the light is one of great darkness and one that breaks many taboos.

It’s said that everyone is born an Aghori but eventually we grow out of it and learn the boundaries of our society. A baby will happily play with with its own feces, for example, until it learns that such an act is unacceptable and disgusting. An Aghori however, believes that everything is sacred and that therefore one shouldn’t be disgusted by anything. They walk naked, save for a loin cloth, and cover themselves from head to toe in the white ash of cremated bodies. They adorn themselves in human skulls and drink from a human skullcap.

‘They live in Varanasi’, Fred told me, ‘close to the crematoriums.’ Varanasi is the city of the dead, the perfect place for an Aghori. Twenty-four hours a day, hundreds of bodies are cremated there, motivated by the belief that if you are laid to rest in the Ganges river in Varanasi you will escape the cycle of reincarnation. Not every body is burnt however, since burning is done for purification and it’s believed that some are already pure. Pregnant women, children, sadhus, snake-bite victims and lepers are all saved from the fire and are instead taken to the middle of the river, tied to stones and sunk into the murky depths. Sometimes they come loose and float to the surface, and it’s these bodies that Aghoris use for their ceremonies. After midnight, the Aghori takes a corpse from the river and sits upon it to meditate. He then consumes a part of its flesh. I heard that they also have sex with the dead but some say it’s not true.

When I first heard about Aghoris, I was fascinated. I wanted to know more and most of all, I wanted to meet one for myself. ‘You don’t find an Aghori’ Fred told me, ‘they find you.’ Fred is one such person that’s been ‘found’ by an Aghori. He shook his head as he spoke about it, as if he still couldn’t believe it himself. ‘Every time I went to ask a question, he answered it before I spoke it aloud.’ As I listened, I was already mentally making plans to go to Varanasi.

A few months later I found myself there, sitting in a boat on the Ganges. A blood orange sun was rising through the smog as our boat glided past the buildings and stone steps that lined the riverbank. All along the waters edge people performed their morning bathing rituals, immersing themselves in the sacred water. A little girl with a kick board and floaties was having a swimming lesson and a little further on people were laying out their freshly cleaned clothes on the steps to dry. It all looked so pleasant and so peaceful compared to what my guidebook had prepared me for. Perhaps I would’ve been envious as I watched them splash around in the morning light, washing themselves in the cool water. Perhaps, if it weren’t for the knowledge that the bottom of the river was filled with decomposing human bodies.

I asked the man rowing the boat about Aghoris, hoping to find out some new information about them and about where I could casually bump into one. He told me conclusively that there’s only one true Aghori left in Varanasi, the rest live in South India. He pointed to the vast sandy floodplains on the opposite side of the river, “that’s where he lives.” My eyes widened in anticipation as I followed his finger to a solitary hut near the water’s edge. We were close. There was silence, and then he asked “do you wanna go there?”

I nodded. This was a lot easier than I’d anticipated. As he began to steer the boat off course I looked apologetically to the rest of the passengers on the boat, most were friends I was travelling with but there were a few strangers too. They all thought the tour was over, that we were heading back for breakfast now, and not that we were going to the deserted, silent side of the river to knock on the door of a flesh-eating holy man.

As the boat got closer and closer to the bank my stomach began to tighten. Oh shit, what’ve I done. Fred’s words popped into my mind - you don’t find an Aghori, they find you. And yet, here I was, about to turn up uninvited at an Aghori’s doorstep. I just hoped he was in the mood for guests.

I stepped off the boat and onto the muddy bank. A dog near the water’s edge caught my eye, it was chewing on something. I glimpsed the sticky red of raw meat, like something I’ve seen a lion chewing on in a wildlife documentary. Up ahead, the flat-roofed straw hut of the Aghori stood in solitary silence. The others clambered out of the boat too, except for a couple who decided, perhaps quite sensibly, to stay put. A man approached us, he exchanged a few words in Hindi with the boat man who translated for us. The Aghori wasn’t home, he was out of town and wouldn’t be back another 10 days. I let out a deflated breath. My mission wouldn’t be fulfilled today, the Aghori didn’t want to be found.

The local man waved at us to follow him and he led us to the door of the hut. It seemed we were going to be given a guided tour of the establishment in the Aghori’s absence. I don’t usually break and enter people’s homes when they’re not around, but I’d come this far and I wasn’t going to refuse a quick peak inside. Hanging on the outside wall of the hut was a large poster with the Aghori’s name typed in large font across it, underneath was a phone number and a website. I guess the Aghori isn’t as elusive as I thought. He pulled back the black tarp that covered the doorway. I was expecting a dim, cluttered room, maybe some skulls hanging up here and there, some left over body parts sitting in the corner perhaps. But what I walked into was a sparse dirt-floored room, with a triangular fire place made of clay in the centre, and not much else. On the wall, nailed to the bamboo, hung the only evidence of the man who inhabited the place, it was a gold-framed portrait of the Aghori. He stared out of the frame white dark eyes, a cumbersome necklace of skulls was draped around his neck, reaching to his knees. Next to it was another photo, framed in the same gold. This one was a group photo of seven Aghoris lined up together, posing for the camera like some kind of absurd family portrait. It’s nice to know even an Aghori has friends, I thought.

Ritual Smoke and a Mountain Burial

It was raining when we arrived in Manali. Breath escaped our lips dressed in white and disappeared like a ghost into the misty air. The last of the Himalayan winter dripped from the sky and hung in sparkling drops from the limbs of trees, the surrounding mountains were coated in white. We walked half a kilometre from the road, along a narrow footpath that followed a river upstream to our guest house.

‘l’m making tea, would you like a cup?’ asked Fred when we arrived to the very quiet guest house. We accepted without hesitation. Tea leaves, ginger, cardamon and milk boiled and brewed together on the gas stove, steam flowed out of the kitchen. When it was ready, Fred invited us to drink it in his room where we could keep warm.

The four of us sat together on and around the bed, a heater glowed red in the corner. There was Gonzalo from Chile, Rune from Norway, myself from Australia, and Fred. Fred lives in a little house two minutes walk upstream from the hostel, the last house before there’s nothing but wilderness. He was helping to look after the hostel while the owner was away in Delhi.

‘What do you do when you’re not looking after this place?’ I asked him. He told us he’s a tattoo artist and laid out two folders full of sketches and photos of his work onto the bed. Serpents and Hindu gods stared back at us from the pages. He told us that apart from making tattoos, he does yoga, looks after the dogs, smokes chillums…just lives. ‘Simple living, high thinking’.

Fred was born in the throbbing, chaotic, noisy heart of Bombay city and worked there as a suit clad administrator. Six years ago he decided to step off the treadmill and exit the system, choosing instead to live by himself close to the elements and close, probably not by coincidence, to where arguably the best marijuana in the country grows wild in the mountains. He’s been smoking charas, a substance similar to hashish, from a traditional Indian pipe called a chillum, for the past 17 years. He claims to have never been to a doctor in all of that time, treating himself instead with charas and other natural medicines.

‘The chillum’ Fred explained, ‘combines all of the elements’. He rolled the charas in his fingers as he spoke, warming it until it was malleable and soft before breaking it into tiny pieces. He poured the charas, mixed with tobacco, from the palm of his hand into the cylindrical pipe, packing it to the brim. ‘The pipe itself is traditionally made from clay, that’s earth.’ With the tilt of a bottle he wet a small strip of cotton and squeezed it in the palm of his hand and shook it out before using it to cover the bottom end of the pipe. ‘Water.’ He brought the pipe to his lips and lit the top with a match, swirling the flame in a circular motion. ‘Fire.’ Smoke flowed from his nostrils and swirled up to the ceiling, lingering above us. ‘The high that you get, that’s air, ether. It’s a blessing from Shiva.’ Lord Shiva, one of the three supreme Hindu gods, smoked chillums and many spiritual and holy people in India smoke in his name, for them it’s a ritual. The natural high is an aid to meditation and higher thinking.

Outside the rain persisted, on the mountain tops it was probably snowing. The room was warm with body heat and one by one the dogs pushed their way through the door, retreating from the cold. Leila and her pure white puppy Shingo made their way into the corner where they curled up together in the warmth. Shingo means ‘white wolf’ in the local language. After a few minutes the door creaked open again and Shingo’s father Bhaloo, a bulky, bear-like dog padded into the room. He sat at the base of the bed, his presence calm and strong. ‘He’s my brother’ said Fred with a smile. ‘I don’t like to say that I own them, I prefer to think of them as my roommates.’

Fred continued to host us for the rest of the week, treating us like family. He spent hours brewing chai and cooking dhal, beans and rice for us, without ever asking for anything in return. He invited us to his home and we sat around the fire stove drinking chai and listening to Fred tell stories, of which he had a never-ending supply. He told us stories of Hindu gods and goddesses, of holy men who are buried alive in a meditative state and dug out 20 days later, still alive. He told us of Aghoris, holy men and women who live in crematoriums, who have sex with the dead and who pull rotting corpses from the Ganges river and eat them. He told us of the month he spent with a python sleeping in his bed, on his chest. ‘It’s said that whoever can sleep with a snake is able to control their nerves’ he said. His words whirled and swirled around our heads like the smoke from his chillum.

The rain and snow ended after a few days and one morning I woke up to sunshine coming through the window. Gonzalo, Rune and I decided to go for a walk in the mountains. Fred suggested a place we could go and told us to go with Bhaloo, ‘he knows the way, just follow him’. So that’s what we did. With the dog as our walking guide we made our way along a beautiful mountain trail. Bhaloo would walk ahead until we couldn’t see him any longer and then he would stop and wait for us. As soon as we came into sight he would continue walking. When we reached the snow line, we turned back and headed for home.

Two days later was Shivaratri, a special day of celebration for Lord Shiva. We woke up to find Bhaloo dead, his body lying stiff on the ground. Fred suspected that he’d been poisoned, according to him the locals aren’t fond of dogs. ‘Shiva is trying to teach me detachment’ said Fred knowingly, ‘he’s gone to a better place.’

We set about digging a grave for Bhaloo outside Fred’s house, taking it in turns to loosen the earth with a pick and shovel it out. Fred made a fire nearby and lit a circle of incense around it. The sun arched across the sky above us as we worked into the afternoon. When the grave was done we lowered the body into it, sprinkled salt over it to stop the smell and covered it over with earth. On top of the grave we arranged stones and a modest collection of flowers that we foraged from around the house, the first signs of spring. Fred planted a tree in the centre.

Train lines weave through India like veins carrying blood through the body. I sit like a tiny cell inside a carriage travelling towards the boney spine of the Himalayas. Rain pelts against the window and the landscape runs past in streaks. The steady rhythm of the train lulls weary travellers who are stretched out on vinyl bunk beds.

At each stop a passing parade makes its way through each carriage. First is a man carrying a thermos in one hand and a stack of small cups in the other. ‘Chai, chai, garam chaaaiiiii…’, he pauses his mantra to pour a cup of sweet and spicy tea for a passenger next to me. Next, a crippled beggar drags himself along by the hands, stopping at the feet of each passenger with pleading eyes and hands held out. Most turn their heads to look out the window but one stranger hands him a note which he touches to his head and then his heart before putting it in his pocket. The beggar is followed by another vendor, this one selling small plastic men with sticky hands and feet. He throws one at the wall behind my head to demonstrate how it sticks like a spider then flips down the wall. He doesn’t get any takers, so he shuffles onto the next carriage.

Another man appears. He, or rather she, has fake breasts that protrude from underneath a colourful sari and her face is decorated with make-up. With one hand on her hip she waltzes up to the man across from me and puts out her hand, into which he places a note. Everyone else in the carriage also fish out some money and put it into her hand. I look around the carriage and get the feeling that there’s something about this scenario that I’m missing. I later learn that she is a hijra, a member of India’s third gender. In recent years the Indian Supreme Court ruled that non-binary males and females would be legally recognised under a ‘third gender’ category. Since ancient times hijra have been believed to have the power to bless and also to curse, and many are invited to bless celebrations such as births and marriages. When the British colonised India they passed a law that made all hijras criminals and their community was pushed onto the margins of society, forcing many into prostitution and begging. Despite this, judging from the willingness of the passengers on the train to give this hijra money, the hijra are still somewhat revered, or perhaps feared, for their demigod powers.

Jodhpur - The Blue City

Bhaurcheeria, the mountain of birds, has rocky sides that rise steeply from the clustered buildings of Jodhpur city and hold up the impenetrable walls of the Mehrangarh fort. Before the fort was built in 1460 the hill was inhabited by a single hermit who, disgruntled at being forced from his home, cursed Rao Jodha, the man responsible for the fort, with a never ending shortage of water. To counter the curse Rao Jodha arranged for a sacrifice to be made and one brave soul was buried alive in the foundations of the fort.

The enormous gates to the fort are embellished with protruding spikes to prevent elephants from charging into them and on the wall just inside the gates are the hand prints of royal widows who burned themselves alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres.

Pink is said to be the colour of hospitality, so in 1876 when the Prince of Wales came to visit Jaipur, the Maharaja, the king of Jaipur, ordered all the buildings in the city to be painted pink to welcome him. According to our taxi driver however, the buildings were painted pink because the Maharaja just really liked the colour.

Before going to Jaipur I had a ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’ kind of image in my head, of aesthetically pleasing hues of baby pink at every turn. Jaipur however, is no Wes Anderson feature and if you ask me the buildings are more of a burnt orange than pink. Like a lot of places in Asia, footpaths are not really existent so walking down the street requires you to navigate in and around rickshaws, cars, trucks, cows, people, piles of rubble and rubbish and more people. The sky is a haze of white and the air if full of dust and the sound of liberally used car horns. Just walking down the street is an exhausting activity and one that has me contemplating moving to a remote village in the mountains and becoming a hermit.

Hot chai, rickshaws and overstimulation on the streets of Delhi.