Of hopes and beliefs

Travel is more than seeing of sights, it’s the development of ideas, the art of appreciation, a change that’s deep and permanent, a change that involves us and our entire being. The second I learnt that I will be spending ten days in Kashi, I knew I was going to be a traveler, not a tourist. You may wonder what the difference between the two might be. A traveler is constantly in action, he is never passive, he walks in search of stories, he craves adventure, experience and he is not afraid of the surprises that the journey has to offer. On the contrary a tourist is passive, he yearns to reach a destination, he expects interesting things to happen to him and he looks, doesn’t see.

I knew I was going to be a traveler, I was going to feel the city, I was going to be a part of it. I wanted to look at it from all angles, from the cracks on the sidewalks, from the eyes of the paanwala, from the utmost devotee of Lord Shiva, from the peanut seller on the ghats and from the kites flying high over the holy river Ganga. The city of banaras, a 2000 years old civilization, God alone knows how many stories that place has to offer. Mark Twain put it correctly, “'Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together”

I could have been researching about the place right there and then, I could have been reading books about the history of banaras, I had so many questions in my head about why the place has got so many names, about its mythological ties with Lord Shiva, about the river and its sanctity. My curiosity was getting the best of me, yet I decided to lay it to rest till I reach Varanasi. I wanted to hear stories about Varanasi from Varanasi, I wanted to go there with an empty bag and come back with an overweight baggage filled with extra ordinary stories of people, the city and its inhabitants. Hell, I didn’t even mind paying extra baggage at the airport if i was getting so much back from one place.