Photographer’s Pilgrimage part 2

The expedition that we were on was called “a Photographer’s Pilgrimage” and the plan was to visit two of the Holiest places in India and document the life of the Holy Men. We visited Varanasi and Amritsar. 

Varanasi is the holiest place in the Hindu religion. The numbers of people visiting are absolutely staggering and we really struggled to wrap our brains around it. One hundred and fifty thousand people arrive every Sunset and Sunrise comes for Arty (prayers) on the banks of Ganges River (Holy River). If you can imagine it’s about double what we get at a Rugby test and they manage that twice a day. The chaos in the street was a nightmare, we had to move equipment in all those crowds. We eventually manage to get a boat that we could use on the River and that made our life a lot easier. It meant that our gear was protected and we could also be manoeuvred into spots where it was easy to shoot from.

Varanasi is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. For the Hindus, this is the most sacred spot where they can pray and be cremated. It is believed that a believer will go to heaven if they get cremated in Varanasi. There are hotels where people are waiting to  die. The fire that they use to start a cremation fire has been burning nonstop for over two thousand years.

It was a real eye opener to see how they cremate people and throw the ashes in the river, right next to where other people are having their Holy bath. There are bodies and carcasses floating on the river and you have huge crowds of people coming for prayers. I just realised that there is no way I would ever get used to this scene.

Amritsar was the other extreme of the spectrum. This is the Sikh’s holiest place and they have a Temple made out of Gold. The Golden temple is the largest Structure in the world made out of Gold. Where Varanasi was characterised by a sense of chaos, the Golden Temple was well organized and super-efficient.  We got an exclusive tour with the Director of the Golden temple. Again our minds couldn’t wrap around the stats.  Two hundred and fifty thousand people pray at the Golden temple every day. They have free accommodation for a hundred thousand people, they serve a hundred thousand free meals a day. Everything is donated and the volunteers on pilgrimage help to prepare the food, serve it and then wash the dishes.

A prayer made at the Golden Temple counts double what a prayer made anywhere else.  This make this a very popular pilgrimage. The Golden temple is surrounded by water and it’s very important to pray in the water. They have a lot of guards that patrol the edge of the baths to make sure nobody drowns.

I have included an Image of the Golden temple just to show you what it looks like.

This was a very moving trip for me, you help to be moved by so many people praying and worshiping their God and the most important thing that I learned is that all religions are different. It’s not for us to judge a religion we must just accept it’s different from what we believe. It doesn’t mean they believe less than we do.