Lorre Weidlich - Hyde Park Foreign Affairs Desk This is the latest in an ongoing series of reports by Hyde Park's well traveled friend and neighbor, Lorre Weidlich

I arrived in Varanasi on a train four hours late, not unusual for India. When I disembarked, a rickshaw driver attached himself to me. I negotiated a rate of rs. 50 to take me to my hotel, which he said was about 4 km away. As I checked into the hotel, I asked the hotel clerk how far away the railroad station was. He said, It's a five-minute walk. This set the tone for my visit to Varanasi.

    Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges, is the sacred city of India. People go there to die and to bathe in the Ganges, to bring bodies of loved ones for cremation and to commit ashes of loved ones to the Ganges. (Hindus cremate the dead and commit the ashes to a river.) It is also, according to one of my teammates in Bangalore, the city of con men.

    Half my team warned me against going to Varanasi; the other half, when I returned, said, "I should have warned you." Their primary reason was the dirt. Varanasi is certainly dirty; it makes a Mexican border town look like a candidate for the Martha Stewart "Cleanest City of the Year" award. In the old city, where the walkways are about as wide as three people abreast, there are piles of rotting garbage and, because the cows roam freely, piles of manure. I can handle dirt as long as my spirit of adventure is intact, but nothing can destroy your spirit of adventure faster than being cheated, tricked, harassed, and pressured for money.

    The focal point of Varanasi is the ghats, broad stone staircases that lead down into the Ganges. Each has a name and several have particular significance. Manikarnika, for example, is the chief burning ghat. My (new) rickshaw driver recommended that I start my exploration at Kedar ghat.

    As we made our way through the traffic, I saw people making noise and carrying something wrapped in red and gold. Great! I thought, Festival! and reached for my camera. My driver said, "Dead body". I wasn't sure I had heard correctly. I didn't get a picture.

    I wandered up and down the ghats, viewing the activity. On Manikarnika, bodies wrapped in red and gold were being cremated. A man there pointed to the building behind me and told me it was occupied by widows, praying and waiting to die. I was welcome, he said, to ascend to the balcony to watch the cremations. I declined. Then he asked for a donation.

    There were tourists, both Western and Eastern, everywhere, more than I have seen anywhere in India or Asia. Most were young. I talked briefly to a young Finn with a shaved head, heavy earrings, and 3 of his 4 limbs heavily tattooed. As I watched them I felt incredible nostalgia, thinking of the way so many young people during the late '60s and '70s came here following the lead of George Harrison and the Beatles. Varanasi, I