[bild von shunya.net]"...Not everyone is burned at the ghats, oh no. Holy cows, children less than twelve years old and pregnant women are not burned because they are pure (in the latter case it's the baby who is pure) and the whole point of the fire is to cleanse the soul on its way to heaven; lepers and people suffering from other diseases ('People with poisons in their body' was how one chap referred to it) are also not burned, and along with the cows, children and pregnant women they're tied to a rock, rowed out into the middle of the river and dumped overboard.
That sounds just fine, but Indian ropes being Indian ropes, these bodies soon find their way to the surface, and due to the gentleness of the current in the non-monsoon Ganges they can hang around for quite some time before the birds and dogs finally get to them. During this time they tend to drift over to the east bank, which probably explains why there isn't a great deal of housing there, daily dead body delivery not being up there in the estate agent's list of desirable attributes. Taking a boat on the river, a delightful experience especially at sunrise, is a wonderful and cheap way to enjoy the ghat area, but if you're squeamish then the floating bodies with their gaping skulls picked almost clean by the birds, and the faintly familiar rib cages stacked on the east bank, may put you off your breakfast...."
und gleich nützliche tipps dazu, 'how to survive india':"...One of the biggest mistakes you can make when visiting a country like India is to try to apply your own set of values to society. Hard though it seems to be for some westerners to believe, Indians don't live by our rules, they live by their own, and this is probably responsible for the most discord between travellers and Indians...."
einblicke ins indische leben, in die kultur und das leben, interessantest zu lesen, ein reisebericht aus 1998 von mark moxon, echt lesenswert !!!
