Left Varanasi at 2pm on Sunday 30th August on the 3 and half hour bus to Prayag/Allahabad.Before leaving, had time for a boat ride along the Varanasi ghats at dawn which was beautiful, but a little too voyeuristic for me. Perhaps it was because the other two young travellers in the boat with me went into super-camera over-drive with telescopic lens that reached almost into the suds of the ghat bathers. So this time I took no pictures.
Later, just before leaving, I took a boat across the river where it was quiet and cleaner….though to read the Lonely Planet on toxic levels of the Ganges at Varanasi, I should be dead now for doing so.
Arrived in Prayag at 5.30pm and rickshaw-ed to a boat-hire place to take me to the Triveni Sangum, the sacred confluence of three rivers, the Ganges, Yamuna and the Saraswati (which is believed to flow underground). Arriving at the Saraswati boat ghat, there were about 10 enlivened boatmen demanding huge prices , my rickshaw driver and I, and a fast fading evening sun. I had been very eager to stop off at Prayag en route to Mathura, just to take this bathing opportunity, but now it seemed that it wasn’t looking like such a good idea after all.
It was over-priced, they were uncomfortably over-keen, and I knew there was at most one hour of daylight left. The boat ride takes a half hour each way to the middle of the river from this isolated Saraswati ghat. I decided, against my desire, not to risk it as it didn’t feel quite right to go out alone with any one of these men.
So I turned to leave and walked back up from the rivers edge to my rickshaw, disappointed. Climbing back up, another little boatman appeared, in traditional white dhoti and religious markings on his forehead. He asked how much they had charged me and laughed at the answer. He offered to take me for a fraction of their cost and something about his demeanour, mood, and size, made me accept.
The sun was setting as we arrived at the little bathing platform in the middle of the river where it is shallow enough to stand.There was a gathering of about ten other crowded boats there and the tiny platform was full of men splashing around. I decided against bathing there even if it was the particular spot the brahmins did special rituals. I indicated to the boatman that I would hop over the side of the boat to which he stood up and shouted, “No madam! It is 40 metres deep…… you cannot……you must go there to standing place!” pointing to the middle of the crowd whose eyes were now fixed on us as we drew up in our boat. Those eyes made my decision.
The confluence of the Yamuna, Ganges, and Saraswati rivers, at Prayag
So I did get to bathe at the sacred sangum where you can clearly see the two colours of the bluer Yamuna and the muddier Ganges meet. But I didn’t bathe on the platform and photographs were taken of the apparently worthy spectacle of a white woman who could swim that evening.
The boatman smiled kindly when I returned and rowed me safely back to shore as darkness set in. As I changed in a ladies room back at the ghat, he must have spoken to the other boatmen, because they all came with altered mood to say goodbye and wish me well on my tirtha yatra.
I happily boarded the train for Mathura that night, wet clothes in hand and chuffed by my encounters with the Yamuna, the Ganges, and the boatmen.
