On top of the usual packing decisions tourists must make—this shirt or that one? a money pouch or a fanny pack? white tube socks or black tube socks?—our intrepid group of travelers from Columbia University had extra considerations to weigh for our recent visit to India.

When a two-week trip entails visits to a dozen holy places, each with different rules regarding appropriate attire of the devout pilgrim, the idea of sensible footwear acquires a new meaning.

From Mathura to Varanasi, almost every site of worship we visited required visitors to enter in a shoeless state as a sign of respect. So first and foremost, shoes must be easy to take off and put back on, a lesson that Ari Paul had learned the hard way from a previous trip to India.

“I’d been to India a year ago, and on that trip I was wearing Doc Martens,” the popular British boots, Paul said. But his boot laces ultimately took too much time to tie and untie.

“At temples, everyone had to wait for me every time and I really held up the group. I really regretted bringing the Doc Martens,” he said. “This time, I was wearing Pumas,” sneakers that Paul said, “you can just slip on really easily.”

At times there seemed to be a cottage industry centered around the protection of visitors’ shoes. Outside some temples and mosques there were stands where visitors could leave their belongings. At the Golden Temple in Armritsar, our group checked in our sandals and sneakers en masse, which attendants placed together in a large dusty jute bag and kept behind a counter.

Mariana Martinez Estens takes off her shoes outside a temple. Again. (Sophia Chang)

But at sites like the Jama Masjid in New Delhi, a couple of local residents sat on stools and kept watch over the assortment of shoes left on the steps outside the mosque. It was an ad-hoc arrangement that Maura Moynihan, daughter of former ambassador to India Sen. Daniel Moynihan, had warned us might result in a few pairs of stolen shoes, but luckily no one lost footwear on this trip.

The shoe guardians do not watch visitors’ belongings just for fun, of course, a fact that Michal Lumsden learned early in the trip while we were in New Delhi. There, she went with a group of students to visit the shrine of Nizamuddin Chishti, a Sufi saint.

“We took our shoes off and there were two little boys out front who were watching the shoes. I thought they were just making sure no one was going to steal them,” she said. “But they demanded that we pay them. I wasn’t going to pay them to get back my shoes. So we walked away and they started yelling at us.”

Like putting on a yarmulke or a headscarf, the simple act of shedding one’s shoes serves both as a sign of respect but also as a preparation to enter a sacred place, Paul noted.

“When you’re taking off your shoes it’s a real reminder that you’re entering another space, and it’s the defining moment between the outside and the holy,” he said. “For actual worshippers and for journalists like us, that moment of taking off your shoes really reiterates the fact that we’re entering a sacred space.”

Other rules were in play, especially for the 14 females in our group. The women had to cover our heads with scarves during trips to Muslim sites, such as our visit to the Darul Uloom Wakf madrassa in Deoband. At the Golden Temple, even the men had to cover their heads, with white cloths offered by temple officials. And at the Jain Temple in New Delhi, all visitors were asked to remove leather items in deference to the Jains, whose belief in nonviolence eschews the use of animal products.

Some of the prohibitions reflected not sacred dogma but modern reality. In Varanasi, we could not bring in electronic equipment to the Sankat Mochan Temple where a recent bomb explosion had killed several people, and we filed past metal detectors in Mathura on our way to Lord Krishna’s birthplace, Shri Krishna Janma Bhoomi.

During our sunrise visit to the Taj Mahal in Agra, tour guides offered visitors slipcovers that resembled shower caps for their shoes to protect the beautiful expanses of white marble. Erik Wander, who had already abandoned the notion of wearing socks with his sneakers earlier in the trip, chose to paddle around barefoot.

“Walking up on the marble with no shoes or socks on, it was nice and cool and smooth. That made me feel a little more in touch with the place,” Wander said.

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NEW DELHI, INDIA -- The motorized rickshaws of this city have the engines of lawn mowers but are driven like rocket ships. It is a rainy day in March, and as buses, fuel trucks, grandmothers on motorcycles, and vintage cars swerve within inches of us, all producing their mad cacophony of honking horns, my face goes whiter and whiter.

Beside me a young woman laughs.

Her name is Priyanka and she is a 22-year-old university student. She has volunteered to help me find sources for a story I’m working on.

But on this Wednesday afternoon, as we careen around the curves and charge across the flyovers, I do nothing but pray for survival and listen to Priyanka’s melodic voice.

“Let me tell you something about this Jennifer Lopez,” she says. “Americans think she is fallen from the sky. I don’t understand. She is not so beautiful.”

“Can you tell him to drive slower? I think I’m going to—”

“And Leonardo DiCaprio? Let me tell you. I was happy when that boat sank.”

The rickshaw stops. A woman holding an infant runs through traffic to tug my arm. We pull away as Priyanka hands her a tiny silver coin.

“How old are you?” Priyanka asks. I’ve told her my job in New York is to write about love and dating. Perhaps that’s where this question is leading.

“I’m 33.”

“You’re so old!” She laughs. “In India if you are not married by 30 you are finished. For girls it is 27.”

This seems a little harsh.

“I will finish university when I am 25,” she continues. “Then I will be married at 27.”

To a New Yorker who writes about dating and nightlife, who has interviewed so many women who have abandoned even the idea of finding a spouse, it sounds like someone saying she will find a six-bedroom apartment on Central Park West. On a Friday. In September. When it happens to be windy. Sure, it’s possible, but life isn’t ever that simple, is it?

A Different Way

But perhaps the point is that for many Indians, it is that simple. Forget the reports that appear in magazines like Newsweek, each featuring the obligatory photos of scantily clad 20-somethings in the nightclubs of Mumbai. This country, when it comes to marriage, is still founded more on the customs and principals of Hinduism and the extended family than those of “Sex and the City” and the free market.

Spouses meet through parents. Overwhelmingly. Recommendations begin in the late teen years and serious introductions start not long thereafter. The entire family—parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles—constitutes the search committee. I’ve begun to wonder whether the word “arranging” even comes close to how marriages begin here. “Networking” better captures it.

The sexual mores of secular American youth—premarital sex beginning at 17, for example—that are purportedly on the rise here, are still largely blocked by two obstacles: religious tradition and to a lesser extent, logistics.

Families live together, often in the same room. Even in Mumbai, where there is money and anonymity, desire is held in check by the extant elements of the Rent Act. Think of New York City’s rent control laws re-written by Lenin and you have a sense of this legislation. Many tenants pay what they were charged in the 1950s. Developers don’t build apartment buildings—what would be the point when you can’t raise rents or evict anyone? The housing shortage is just staggering. There may be 18 million people in that city, but not many of them are young and single and have their own apartments.

But even those who are young, dress in Western clothes, speak English, go to nightclubs, and who are ambivalent about arranged marriage, will scoff at this typical American arrangement: two people living together for years, unmarried, childless, unsure if the other person is “the one.” Isn’t the whole point to be loved, to carry on your traditions, and to start your own family?

In America

12,000 miles away, on an April afternoon in Flushing, Queens, Jagdish Sabbir is praying. He is a 19-year-old undergraduate at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the City University of New York. Today he is inside the Ganesha Temple, 45-57 Bowne Street, circling the navagraha, a shrine to the nine planets. He is dressed in designer jeans and a sweatshirt, he lives in one of the world’s most secular cities, but he comes here everyday.

“A devout young man,” says, Ganapathy Pamanabhan, the temple’s public relations officer who is affectionately known as “GP.”

It is a Saturday and the temple is crowded. Most of the women wear traditional Indian dress; most of the men do not. Sabbir is one of the few people who appears to be by himself. I can’t help asking him a few questions about marriage. Is he open to his parents finding him a spouse?

“I would like to meet her on my own but that really isn’t the most important thing. So long as she respects my mother and we can carry on the traditions, you know, how we meet isn’t what matters.”

The answer is a key to understanding not simply Indian cultural values, but Hinduism itself.

It is a religion with neither a centralized bureaucracy nor a uniform dogma. Beyond the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, there may be millions of other gods. Ceremonies vary widely from region to region, family to family.
And yet it connects the majority of Indians in a way Judaism may be said to connect Jewish Israelis: it is a religion, yes, but one that is synonymous with national origin, ethnicity, and a way of life. And a key to that way of life is marriage.

I ask Sabbir if he has a time table.

“My mom wants me to graduate first, get a degree, get a job, and then think about marriage. She doesn’t want me to think about it all right now.”

When does he expect a wedding to take place?

“Late 20s. Early 30s. At the latest.”

Changes

The debate over arranged marriage, at least as it is posed in the West, has been framed not unlike the debate between socialism and capitalism. Should one submit to planning from above, and the limitations of freedom that might entail, or is one better off when individuals are left to compete for resources – in this case a spouse – in the marketplace? We see it, in other words, in the secular terms of contemporary politics: freedom versus subjugation.

Most Indians don’t see it that way. For them, there is nothing oppressive in meeting a potential spouse through family recommendations. Some might say involving the extended family and paying attention to matters of social standing and character actually have many more centuries of success behind them than modern American love marriages.

Perhaps the real question for Indians is whether the values and practices of Hinduism—with its emphasis on the family, and view of marriage as being not just between two people, but between two families—can thrive despite changing economies and immigration to the West.

And when asked about the continuation of their religion and their traditions with respect to marriage, around the world, from the streets of New Delhi to a temple in Queens, the answer still appears to be a very firm “yes.”

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VARANASI, INDIA -- It was more than 50 years ago when Veer Bhadra Mishra’s dhoti kurta lost to the lathe. His teacher in the machine shop at Banaras Hindu University’s engineering school took one look at the flowing dhoti wrapped around his student’s waist and the loose kurta, a traditional Indian shirt, hung from his shoulders. He imagined them flapping near the spinning gears of the lathe machine and told Mishra he couldn’t work in the shop unless he was in proper pants and a shirt.

“So I said that I was not going to go to the engineering school,” he recalls, laughing now at this youthful stubbornness from the vantage point of his 68 years. After a week of gentle convincing by his mother and a family friend, Mishra returned to the machine shop, this time dressed in new pants and a shirt.

Mishra has spent the years since then moving between the world of the dhoti kurta and the lathe. By inheritance he is the mahant, or head priest, of the Sankat Mochan temple, one of the holiest temples in the holy city of Varanasi (formerly called Banaras). By training he is a professor of hydraulic engineering, recently retired from the faculty at his alma mater Banaras Hindu University (BHU). At the intersection of his role as priest and his work as an engineer he found his true calling: cleaning the sacred water of the Ganga (or Ganges) River, a calling that has brought him into the world environmental movement, put him on stages with leaders of countries and earned him a spot on Time magazine’s “Heroes of the Planet” list.

Today when he receives guests, Mishra, a small man with a moustache and full head of white hair, does so wearing a dhoti and kurta. He sits in a building that once belonged to Tulsi Das, a legendary 16th century poet and his family’s spiritual forbear. Sankat Mochan temple is built on the site where it is believed the monkey god Hanuman appeared to Tulsi Das 500 years ago. The building, perched over the river, also houses the offices and research laboratory of the Sankat Mochan Foundation and Clean Ganga campaign.

Mishra’s job as mahant recently pulled him into the headlines. On March 7, bombs erupted at a train station in Varanasi and at Sankat Mochan temple, killing 20 people. By the next day, figures associated with the Hindu nationalist wing of Indian politics were trying to use suspicion that the attacks were carried out by Muslim extremists to build capital for their agendas. When a leader of one of these groups attempted to enter the temple the day following the blasts, Mishra forbade it, telling Outlook India that politicians were “practicing politics on the bodies of the dead.”

Priyankar Upadhyaya, a professor and coordinator of the Malaviya Centre for Peace Research at BHU, says that such posturing by Hindu politicians always puts Varanasi Muslims on the defensive. “Every time they have to come out and defend themselves against Hindu nationalism,” Upadhyaya said. “The onus is on Muslims to say that they’re Indians.”

Mishra says that religion is being misappropriated in Indian society. “Those who are in power, those who run this country, I don’t know what they have in their heart and their mind,” he said. “Religion is exploited in so many ways that are not good.” While Mishra’s refusal to allow the blast at the temple to be used for political gain was an ideological stance, it was also a practical one. Some politicians demonstrated near the temple, “but by god’s grace, we could stop that in the temple, and it was not exploited. Otherwise there would have been a riot in Varanasi.”

Mishra comes from a traditional Hindu family, and speaks of Hindus like himself as “practicing Hindus” as opposed to “fundamentalist Hindus.” He is the seventh mahant in his family, a position that is passed between generations from the father to the eldest son. When his father died in 1952, Mishra found himself a mahant at the age of 14, “even before I knew what mahant meant,” he said. One thing that it meant was becoming acquainted with the Ganga. He learned the practice of saying prayers at the river’s edge and submerging himself in the river, taking the holy dip that now begins every day.

Becoming mahant at this early age might have meant a life spent entirely in sacred service to the temple, and Mishra is still unclear about the steps that led him to a secular education. He was the first person in his family to get a college degree. When he talks about going to study engineering at BHU he speaks with a sense of wonder. “I don’t know why this happened,” he says. He can’t remember the logic that took him to engineering school, but he sees God’s hand in the fact that it finally led back to the Ganga.

After graduating from BHU he started lecturing in the university’s engineering department and would later become chair of the department. When he first started teaching and was introduced as the mahant of Sankat Mochan and a BHU professor, the next question would be if he was a professor of philosophy or Sanskrit. During his teaching career, which stretched from 1961 to 2001, Mishra’s days again found him traveling between the traditional Hindu world and the secular world of the university. In the mornings he would descend to the Ganga to do his morning prayers, teach during the day, go to the temple in the evenings, and then return home to prepare his lectures for the next day.

For Mishra, the Ganga represents where these two worlds combine. He describes the world of scientific thought as being one bank of the river, and the deeply spiritual world, one alive with a limitless pantheon (“I would say there are as many gods and goddesses as people who live in India.”) as the other bank. And, he says, they are both equally important. “A rationally trained mind and a committed heart; I am blessed with these two things. If I were only a believer in Ganga, then I would say, I’ll shout at you if you say the Ganga is polluted. And if I were only a scientist with the data we have, we would write a few papers in American Society of Civil Engineers.”

It was with the rational mind of a scientist and the committed heart of a practicing Hindu that Mishra began to think about how the Ganga River could be cleaned. In 1982 he started the Sankat Mochan Foundation and its Clean Ganga campaign. The campaign originally worked to raise public awareness of the river’s pollution with various events in the streets and lecture halls of Varanasi. Since its founding it has moved from being an awareness-raising organization to an environmental monitoring group. It has also been a critic of what it sees as the failure of the first phase of the government’s $100 million Ganga Action Plan, which implemented technology unsuited to the realities of Indian infrastructure and weather. This included treatment facilities that were rendered inoperable during the months of monsoon rains the country has every year.

In 1993, at the end of the first phase of the government’s cleanup plan, the Clean Ganga campaign established a research laboratory to measure the health of the river. What they found was not good: water sampled at various points on the bank of the river revealed that the level of some pollution indicators is 300,000 times what is classified as safe for bathing. Mishra estimates that nearly 95 percent of this pollution is from raw sewage being dumped into the river at 30 points in Varanasi. The existing sewage system is basically unimproved from the one the British put in nearly 90 years ago, even though the population of Varanasi is seven times the size it was when the original system was installed.

The Clean Ganga campaign has openly opposed the government’s idea for the next phase of the Ganga Action Plan and put forward an alternative, far less-costly solution designed by an environmental technology company in Berkeley, California. This plan would cycle wastewater through a system of settling ponds that accelerate the natural cleansing activities of algae. India’s central government won’t approve this plan and private companies won’t agree to fund it without the government’s blessing. In the meantime, the campaign also continues to push awareness-raising locally and internationally and Mishra continues to lecture on the effort to clean the Ganga.

Although a mahant lecturing on aspects of water purification and bio-oxygen demand may seem counterintuitive, Job Kozhamthadam, a professor of physics and the founder of the Indian Institute of Science and Religion in Pune, India, believes that the culture’s intellectual tradition lends itself to such cross-pollination. In an email, Kozhamthadam wrote: “In India, scholars do not see much tension between science and spirituality. One reason is that the Indian tradition is predominantly syncretic, often focusing on commonality. We have a tendency to overlook minor differences.”

While the Sankat Mochan Foundation’s Clean Ganga campaign struggles to find funding, Mishra is also unsure about his legacy as mahant of Sankat Mochan. Mishra has two sons, one an engineer living in Varanasi, the other a neurobiologist in Delhi. He doesn’t think either is inclined to take on the role of mahant. He chooses his words carefully when talking about what mahant means today. “Mahant, now it is not very…who cares for mahants and sadhus [Hindu mystics]?” Mishra says. “There is no commerce, no career involved in it. It is a mission that I am carrying on my shoulders. I hope and wish and pray that this responsibility is taken over by somebody who also does it as best as he or she can.”

A certain broad-brush approach to Hindu theology begins with a trinity: Brahma, the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva, the god of destruction. When asked about this cosmology, Mishra takes issue with this understanding of Shiva, saying the god should be thought of as bringing joy to life’s decay. “We know that this whole creation and all of us, we are not permanent, we are decaying and one day everything has to come to an end,” he said. “It is a shallow pool of time for us in our life. That is the inherent characteristic of our creation in this world. So we have to be happy, we have to be enthusiastic.” Even when he’s talking about conflict between religious groups, the degradation of the Ganga or the uncertainty of his family legacy, the smile that tugs at the corner of his eyes never totally leaves.

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VARANASI, INDIA -- The Economist once called it the largest non-communist organization in the world. One of its activists killed India’s beloved independence leader, Mahatma Gandhi. Fascist, theocratic, chauvinist and militant are only a few of the epithets hurled at its members.

But to those members it is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Roughly translated as the National Volunteers Union and commonly known as the RSS, the organization claims more than seven million adherents across the subcontinent dedicated to Hindu nationalism and the idea that India is, first and foremost, a Hindu nation.

It is a top-down organization, with more than 25,000 chapters all over India but concentrated in the countryside. Each chapter, or shaka, gathers daily for an hour of calisthenics, discussion and prayer, and these meetings are also known as shakas.

Just off Assi Ghat, on the banks of the holy Ganga (formerly Ganges) River in the city of Varanasi, dozens of young boys gathered for an evening session one night last month. They came from nearby apartments to a packed sand courtyard that was home only to one ragged sawtooth oak and a nondescript, white shack off to the side that serves as a Hanuman temple.

Dressed in varying degrees of conformity to the RSS uniform, which consists of pleated khaki shorts, a white, collared long-sleeved shirt folded to the elbows, black shoes and a black cap, the students ranged in age from 5 and 6 to their mid-20s. Their instructors were middle-aged men who themselves had been attending the shakas since childhood.

Their leader, who gave only the name Gyanesh, called out orders as the games portion of the gathering began. Resembling a Hindu version of boy scouts, they stood in line shortest to tallest, wrapped their arms around the waist in front of them, and started running, worm-like, shouting and cheering and soon tripping over each other’s feet.

“The aim is higher nationality,” explained Gyanesh. “How we can grow, that is our goal.”

After the games came what appeared to be a martial arts segment, complete with lunges and sharp arm movements punctuated with "hiyas." “Judo karate,” explained another RSS volunteer, but was quickly corrected by his friend. “Niyud,” a long-time Varanasi resident Devesh Tripathi interrupted. “An Indian martial art.”

RSS volunteers show off their martial arts prowess. (Ari Paul)

The RSS was founded in 1925, by Dr. K.B. Hedgewar, “to save Hinduism from conversions of Christians and Muslims,” as Tripathi put it. Initially set up as an anti-colonial movement, its main goal was to unite Hindus across caste and linguistic lines. Christian and Muslim missionaries would target low-caste Hindus, so the RSS, then and today, created programs targeting poverty and economic development to keep Hindus within their fold.

Often called the “saffron brotherhood” along with their allies in the World Hindu Council (Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or VHP) and the Bharata Janata Party (BJP), the RSS-led network is united under a banner of Hindutva. Saffron is considered the color of Hinduism, but Hindutva is not essentially theology. Instead, it is an idea that imagines India as a motherland and a holy land and its followers take up strident nationalism in the name of her defense.

“We don’t pray to God here, we don’t salute a person,” Tripathi explained, “we pray to the flag.” The children lined up in rows and faced a short pole with a limp orange cloth hanging from its top. This was not the Indian flag, but the Hindutva flag. “Bharat Mata ki jai!” the ragtag bunch shouted, “long live Mother India!”

Tug-of-war, Bharat Mata style. (Ari Paul)

Abhay Pandey, a government employee at Banaras Hindu University who now serves as the RSS head in Varanasi, described his initial attraction to the group. “My family was involved,” he recalled in halting English. “My father was active in RSS,” he continued, “he would work for society, for nation, for deprived persons.”

“We are sons of Bharat Mata,” Pandey said, referring to the motherland. “Our duty, and our worship, is to work for nation.” He thought for a moment, and then clarified, “not only state.”

Even though the RSS stresses its “social and cultural” activities and vocally denies any stake in politics, the group is generally understood as the parent organization of the right-of-center BJP.

The BJP rose to power in 1992, after a national dispute over a 400–year-old mosque in the town Ayodhya that was allegedly built above the ruins of an ancient Hindu temple. Its leaders helped incite a mob that eventually tore down the mosque. A decade later, local Hindutva leaders in Gujarat were accused of participating in the communal slaughter of more than 1,000 Muslims after several dozen Hindus were killed in a train fire, allegedly set by Islamic militants. By 2004, the BJP-led coalition was knocked out of power by the secular Congress Party, though it still controlled many state governments throughout India.

As in Iraq, where Sunnis and Shiites increasingly turn to sectarian leadership for protection since no central force has successfully clamped down on the violence, so, too, communal appeal in India often waxes and wanes with the level of security. “It’s a patronage kind of thing,” said Mannika Chopra, a Delhi-based journalist.

In Varanasi, where bomb blasts killed four and injured dozens last month, Hindus and Muslims have a long, if storied, history of living relatively peacefully together. Varanasi’s Hindus participate in the Muslim holiday of Muharram, and worship at Sufi shrines. The legendary Muslim flute player and one of Varanasi's most celebrated locals,Ustad Bismallah Khan, often plays devotional songs at Hindu temples.

But after the Ayodhya violence, Varanasi’s local Hindi papers published fictionalized accounts of Hindus being killed at a nearby Muslim university and other bouts of Hindu-Muslim violence.

The usually joyful Saraswati Puja, a Hindu holiday celebrating the goddess of knowledge, took a sinister turn this year as the RSS marched in the street carrying swords.

“Young people start with the RSS, and spend two or three years with them and grow disillusioned,” said Priyankar Upadhyaya, a professor at Banaras Hindu University, describing the experience of some members. “Even the bomb blasts for the RSS people were more a tamasha than anything else,” he said, referring to a word used in India meaning show, or entertainment.

“They are basically good people, who want to do good,” Upadhyaya said. “You take away hatred of Muslims and there is not much left.”

The RSS depends on an international fundraising network of Indian expatriates to survive. Dr. Upadhyaya explained that he comes across RSS activists when he visits the U.S. more often than he does in India. “I spent time with Sudarshan in North America,” he recalled, naming the RSS chief. “They just don’t understand the practical implications.”

If the RSS depends on anti-Muslim sentiment as a binding force, they also believe the opposite is true. K.S. Sudarshan offered in an interview with The Indian Express last year, “Pakistan’s identity depends on its enmity with India. If this is removed, then Pakistan will be finished.”

Back at Assi Ghat, the shaka leader, Gyanesh, was finishing up a story about how the 17th century Sikh leader, Guru Gobind Singh, lost his family to Emperor Aurangzeb, the Mughal emperor who was forcing Hindus to convert to Islam or be killed. Instead of surrendering, Gyanesh explained, Singh solidified Sikhism in order to protect Hinduism.

“If your country needs you, will you go to the borders?” Gyanesh shouted in Hindi during the final exercise of the evening. They all raise their hands eagerly.

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In the early morning glow, a sadhu and woman bathed and prayed on the banks of the Ganges. (Sophia Chang)

“Going to the Ganges is like going to church. But church is a matter of choice, and the Ganges is a religious obligation.”

This was the introduction to the spirituality of the Ganges River from our guide, Onkar Dubey, on a pre-dawn bus on Day 12 of our journey. We were driving toward the river to observe the Hindus of Varanasi bathing in its sacred waters. Varanasi is a city of early risers and morning ablutions in the river are considered one of the most sacred and auspicious of Hindu rituals. They are so valuable in Hindu mythology that when some men and women get older, they leave their families and move to Varanasi, where they bathe daily in the river until their deaths.

Dubey explained that sadhus, holy men who renounce family and material possessions to seek a greater spirituality, are particularly drawn to the river’s sacred waters. Many sadhus ritually bathe in the Ganges early each morning, get a blessing from a priest, receive a mark on their foreheads, then sit for an hour or so reading the Bhagavat Gita or pages from their own prayer books. They may visit one of the 2,000 temples that dot the banks of the Ganges for the seven kilometers that stretch through Varanasi. Praying to the rising sun, said Dubey, brings light and life to people.

From a rowboat as the sun was rising, we observed sadhus bathing along with locals and spiritual westerners; monkeys, considered holy in Varanasi because of their relation to Hanuman, the monkey god, chasing each other along steep ghats; two rams butting heads repeatedly; a man floating on his back in the river, surrounded by candles and marigolds. Dhobis, or washermen, soaked clothing in the polluted waters of the Ganges, then slapped the pants and shirts against rocks by the river bank, knee-deep in water.

Dubey pointed out that no houses are built on the east bank of the Ganges, and that the temples and guest houses along the west bank are submerged when the water rises 40-50 feet in the rainy summer months. A local myth says that if someone builds a house on the flood-prone east bank he will be reincarnated as a donkey.

Varanasi is sometimes called a city of burning, and cremation ceremonies take place 24 hours a day along the Ganges, with people coming from all over India to burn their dead on funeral pyres and scatter the ashes into the holy river. Hindus believe that if the body is cremated on the Ganges, the soul goes directly to heaven and achieves moksha, or freedom from the cycle of birth and rebirth. To build a funeral pyre takes about 360 kilograms of wood and costs around Rs 3,000 (or nearly $70). In the funerals we witnessed, bodies wrapped in red and white shrouds burned silently. No one wept or displayed grief as they felt blessed to provide their relatives a burial in the Ganges, Dubey explained.

Aruna Viswanatha, our Hindu student journalist, felt more connected to Varanasi than to any other stop on the trip. She was taken with the authenticity of the city, among both the long-time residents and foreigners alike. “In the U.S., capitalism co-opts culture,” she said. “But in India, India co-opts culture. It’s captivating in the way that it’s such an openly spiritual experience, it’s open but personal and not in a contrived way. And that seems really hard to do.”

After checking out of another hotel (“if it’s Saturday, it must be Varanasi!”) we traveled the 10 km to Sarnath, a famous site of Buddhism in India. Buddha was born Siddhartha Gautama around 600 B.C. in Lumbini, Nepal and achieved enlightenment in Bodh Gaya in the Himalayan foothills. He gave his first sermon to five disciples in the deer park in Sarnath. Sarnath was destroyed in 1197 by Muslims, according to Dubey, and became a buried, forgotten city until the 1830s when it was rediscovered and excavated by the British.

Sarnath has a touristy feel, but inside the Buddhist temple built on the site of Buddha’s cottage in the deer park all was peaceful, and colorful frescos depicted the important moments in Buddha’s life. At the end of the temple an altar held a giant statue of Buddha surrounded by flowers in vases.

Buddha was originally a Hindu, and his teachings are in part a response to Hinduism. Buddha sought to do away with the caste system, and to abolish temple rituals, priests and animal sacrifices. Instead of these, Buddhism pointed to a middle path, a life of moderation that avoided extremes. Jesse Ellison was taken with the connection between Hinduism and Buddhism. “I thought it was so telling that Hindus believe Buddha was a reincarnation of Vishnu,” she said later in the Varanasi airport. “The way Hindus embrace the Buddha as part of their ancient faith speaks to the complexity of Indian culture. India and Hinduism are like giant sponges. They soak everything up and make it their own.”

A lot of the artifacts found at the temple during the British excavation are on display at a nearby museum, including the four lions of the Asoka Column that are featured on all rupee notes and coins. Sophia Chang and some others observed a group of Thai Buddhist monks, clad in yellow robes, chanting in front of a statue of Buddha. Chang found their chanting beautiful. “It was nice that they turned the museum into a place for prayers and redefined what a shrine or temple has to be.”

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When traveling on an overnight train, follow these rules: Make sure to wake your bunkmate if you go to the bathroom, stow your suitcase with zippers facing inward, and avoid prolonged eye contact with strange men.

On our third and final train ride, from Agra to Varanasi, we passed the seven hours sleeping in paired bunks, one piled on top of the other. Tired and weary, we boarded the train around midnight and fell quickly to sleep. Morning broke and soon the singsong repetition of “vegetable cutlet” from a vendor walking through the aisle reminded us of where we were and lulled us back to sleep. Finally Sree Sreenivasan woke his tribe of 14 children with smiles and cookies. A few students sipped sweet chai tea as our train pulled into our penultimate destination: the city of Varanasi.

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Approximately 300 km southeast of Delhi, Varanasi is on the western bank of the Ganges River. Called Ganga in Hindi, the river is often known as the Ganges, the name it was given by the British. It is the locus of city life and impossible to miss; the maze-like streets lead directly to it. Our hotel, the Palace on Ganges, sits above the water.

Varanasi is one of the oldest living cities in the world, and is for Hindus what Mecca is for Muslims. The Ganges is the pathway to eternity, where daily ablutions are performed and souls washed clean in the same water where most residents wash their laundry and brush their teeth.

Hindus believe those who are cremated and released into the waters of the Ganges will attain salvation and liberation from the karmic cycle of death and rebirth. The ghats—or steps that lead down to the ritual bathing areas—are the holiest places on the waterfront. It is here that pilgrims disrobe at daybreak and light candles at nightfall. Tourists pass by in throngs of row boats, snapping pictures and disrupting the quiet.

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Tara Devi watches worshipers' shoes while they pray. When the bomb exploded, she hid behind a tree. (Aili McConnon)

On March 7, the day we departed New York for India, Varanasi was struck by bomb blasts at the train station and a temple, with another explosive device diffused in a nearby residential area. Some students were nervous about going at all. “Is this the place where the bombing took place?” questioned ArunaViswanatha first thing Friday morning, as we made our way through the Sankat Mochan Temple, site of the most recent bombing and among the most sacred of the thousands of temples in the city. Viswanatha, whose family is Hindu, spoke of feeling disconnected as we wove through crowds of worshipers and many in our group whose foreheads were also dotted with orange kumnkumn powder. “I think it would be more poignant if I weren’t with all of you,” she said, “It
almost detracts from it. I can’t feel it.”

Because the temple visit was the most newsworthy of any religious site we visited during the two week trip, questions were plentiful and translators in demand. “By the grace of Hanuman,” said our guide, Sameer Mathur, “Just a few people died.” Hanuman, known as the monkey god, is one of the most popular gods in Hinduism and the one to which the temple is dedicated. The bomb exploded shortly after six o’clock in the evening of Tuesday, March 7, while nearly a dozen couples were waiting to be married in the temple’s courtyard.

Since the blast occurred during wedding season and Tuesdays and Saturdays are the most heavily attended by worshipers, many think the bombing date was timed to wreak the most havoc. Several militant Islamic groups have been mentioned in connection with the blasts but investigators have yet to turn up any conclusive proof.

Ari Paul asked whether both Hindus and Muslims came to help following the bombing. Mathur responded that “we weren’t asking who was Hindu and who was Muslim” as the injured were removed on improvised stretchers made of blankets. Though Varanasi’s majority population is Hindu, approximately twenty 15 to 20 percent are Muslim. A week and a half after the bomb blasts, the city is calm and attendance at the temple is back to normal.

Raju, who does not have a surname, sells trinkets across from the courtyard where the bomb went off. He remarked that little had changed since and he returned to work the very next day. “They believed in God then,” he said, his shirt still pink from recent Holi celebrations, “They believe in it now.”

Tara Devi, who looks after worshipers’ shoes while they pray, has worked at the temple for decades. She hid behind a tree when the blast went off. “Of course I was scared,” she said, “But now there is so much security that we’re not scared. We’re a little nervous and anxious and are always looking for bags and boxes or anything strange.” Since the bombing, dozens of police officers now secure the temple and two metal detectors are installed at its entrance.

Walking out of the gates, Stacey Samuel remarked, “I would think that like elsewhere, people would abandon the temple out of fear, but I’m most impressed that instead they’ve come in greater numbers.” Carolyn Slutsky chimed in, amazed by how “even at 11:30 in the morning, tons and tons of people are being devout.”

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Later in the afternoon we met with Professor Veer Bhadra Mishra, who was named by Time magazine as one of the heroes for the planet. He taught hydraulic engineering at Benares Hindu University and now oversees the Swatcha Ganga Campaign, dedicated to cleaning the polluted river.

Talk quickly turned to the bombings, since Mishra is also mahant, or high priest, of the Sankat Mochan Temple. He considered it God’s grace that the bombings had not escalated into a larger problem. “We were there to tell people that we are to be calm,” said Mishra, “The temple was calm. The city was also calm.” Concern turned to reporters, who have flooded the city since the blasts went off. “The media makes a scripted story,” he said, “And then they start finding actors for their story.”

As we made our way via auto rickshaws to a vegetarian feast, Erik Wander remarked, “It was the best sit-down we’ve had yet.”

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Two worshipers leaving Lord Krishna's birthplace, in Mathura. (Amanda Millner-Fairbanks)

“India’s about as remote as you can get,” mused Emma Goldman, as she sat in the restaurant inside the Radha Ashok Hotel in Mathura, deep in the “Hindi Heartland” of Utter Pradesh. “But I watched ‘Almost Famous’ this morning and now I’m eating fried eggs and ketchup.”

Her father, Professor Ari Goldman, sat next to her in a gray hooded sweatshirt splattered in bright pink and green from yesterday’s Holi festivities.

The group entered the eighth day of its journey through India hunkered down inside the hotel, waiting out the marauding bands that stood just outside the gated compound, paint balloons in hand.

It was the second day of Holi, or “Big Holi,” when Hindus and non-Hindus alike celebrate the triumph of good over evil with bhang—mashed marijuana leaves boiled with milk—and brightly colored powder and water mixtures known as gulal.

Mathura is a famous Hindu pilgrimage site as the birthplace of Lord Krishna, the blue-skinned god of the Bhagavat Gita. Hindus believe that Krishna particularly enjoyed the holiday, as he relished flirting with girls and playing with friends, so Holi takes on even greater significance in this region. The celebrating begins as early as 7 a.m., but by early afternoon, “it becomes calm down,” as Punit Upadhyay at the Radha Ashok front desk described. Most of the class waited inside, but three brave souls stepped out for a walk into town.

Before 11 a.m., that team returned, bewildered, their faces and clothing covered in even deeper shades of pink and green than the day before. “After they hit you, they hug you three times,” said Goldman, as the trio explained they had been hit by Holi revelers even before they made it into town. Bruce Wallace was offered a “cigarette” by a boy who appeared no older than 10.

Finally the group filed onto the bus and headed out after 4 p.m., driving through streets that had taken on a languorous, post-Mardi Gras-esque air. Men and women covered in color strolled about, in step with the cows that also showed evidence of merrymaking: they too hadn’t escaped the gulal.

After dodging monkeys down an alley of bookstalls, the group underwent security checks. Women went through physical searches, men through metal detectors, and they reached Krishna Janmasthan, the site of Krishna’s birth. The temple has been a target for terrorist activity and communal strife ever since a mosque was built next door 500 years ago. But today even the guards were in good spirits as they gleamed with a bright pink hue as they watched over Krishna’s holy site.

“He was born 5,000 years ago,” explained the group’s local tour guide, Deepak Baradwaj. “Krishna was born in a jail.” Fortune-tellers predicted that a child would overthrow King Kansa, so the monarch killed all children born around that time. Krishna’s parents were imprisoned, and the king awaited their newborn, but Krishna’s mother had been told in a dream that her son would be a reincarnation of Vishnu.

As this was the first Hindu temple the group visited, and also the most foreign religion to many students, they tried to filter their understanding through their own experiences.

“Was Krishna born to a virgin mother?” asked Mariana Martinez, a Mexican Catholic, as she looked upon the actual spot considered Krishna’s birthplace. She stood in a dank, dark room that held only a simple raised shrine under six colorful panels depicting the story of his birth. Just as Jesus was born to the Virgin Mary, a birth foretold by the archangel Gabriel, so too Krishna’s birth was prophesized and divinely conceived.

In order to save the baby, Krishna’s parents snuck him out of jail in a basket of rushes and replaced him with a girl. “This is a similar story to Moses,” observed the Israeli-born Dikla Kadosh. Moses, too, was born in captivity and escaped through a basket of rushes sent down a river.

When Kansa came to kill Krishna, he picked up the baby girl to throw to the ground. Instead the goddess Durga appeared, saying that the one who would kill him was still alive. Krishna was then raised by the community and was a mirthful child, stealing yogurt and butter from the cowherds. In his youth, he became a playful, womanizing god who had 16,108 wives.

The temple opened to a tree-lined courtyard, with colorful pieces of cloth tied on every branch. Mannika Chopra translating the guide's story, said that maidens used to bathe in the river naked and Lord Krishna told them not to. When they continued to do so, he mischieviously tied their clothes to the trees. Today devotees mimic this story, and make wishes as they tie bits of sari to the trees.

“Krishna is portrayed as so human,” said fellow student Aili McConnon as she looked on the throngs of worshippers that had come to end Holi with offerings to Lord Krishna. “It’s nice to see Krishna’s birthplace, who is so mischievous, on such a mischievous holiday as Holi.”

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Jesse Ellison and Emma Goldman, Holi-ed in Vrindavan. (Erik Wander)

It is day seven of our marathon journey through northern India and after a 3 a.m. wake-up call, a seven-hour train from Amritsar to Delhi immediately followed by a four-hour bus ride, and some very questionable “cheese” sandwiches, we were all fairly well convinced that our intrepid leaders were actually planning to sacrifice us to the country’s many gods, in the guise of helping us “submit to Mother India.”

We had finally disembarked from the bus (air conditioning options: tropical or frigid) and were approaching the ashram at the Jiva Institute of Vedic Studies in Vindravan, 150 kilometers south of Delhi. It was our destination for the day, and we approached by foot, as the bus could only go so far down the narrow streets. Monkeys ran alongside us; and as we grew nearer the drums got louder and louder.

We hear the chanting of “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. Hare Rama, Hare Rama.” And we see a group of men and women dancing bhangra in the street outside the ashram. Then, out of nowhere, someone smacks me in the forehead with a handful of hot pink powder, gulal, and within minutes, our entire group, and theirs, is covered head to toe with pink, green and yellow powder. Our faces and clothes are suddenly tie-dyed, and everyone is dancing.

It is a fury of color as the drumming grows louder and louder. Shira is waving her hands wildly in the air, bouncing her shoulders up and down. Greg takes off his shower cap and shakes his hips with Mannika and the yogis from the ashram. Amanda, her face covered in pink powder, looks at me, “Are we having fun yet?”

According to Hindu mythology, an ancient atheist king decided he wanted to be worshipped as a God but his own son was the lone holdout, insisting on worshipping the Hindu god Vishnu. The king’s sister, Hollika, was said to be able to withstand fire, so he told her to take her nephew into a fire and sit him on her lap so that the boy would burn. But the king’s son survived and Hollika burned to death.

This story is the origin of the Holi festival and although it is not entirely clear why, today the Holi festival of color is considered a celebration of good over evil and an exuberant welcome of spring. Every March in northern India, Hindus and non-Hindus alike douse each other in powdered color and water, drink marijuana-laced bhang, and in some areas, women beat men playfully with sticks.

Even though today is only choti Holi, the smaller celebration, to be followed by the larger, even more exuberant one the next day, from the bus on the way down, we saw hundreds of men and women covered head to toe in the colorful powders. Watching people smack each other with handfuls of powder, play-fight, and get drunk on bhang, it’s easy to see how it could get dangerous—especially with a big group of foreigners. Our version of Holi takes place safely within the confines of the ashram; still, it was a welcomed moment of release for our weary group.

From the surrounding rooftops families of women and children watch our frolicking in the streets the whole time. I can only imagine they must be baffled. In the preceding days, we have visited so many temples and sites, and spoken with too many people for me to try to count now. This is the first time, as Aili pointed out later, that something has been staged entirely for our benefit. “It’s the first time I really felt like a tourist,” she says. “But then again, I don’t want to get groped.”

Later, after lunch with our hosts at the ashram, the head teacher there, Dr. Satya Narayana Dasa, affectionately known as Babaji, tells us how he gave up his comfortable life as an IIT-educated M-Tech engineer in the United States and moved back to his native India to study the holy scriptures of Hinduism. “Science and technology has made a lot of advancements towards making life easier materially, but there is also something lacking,” he says. “This is what I felt when I was in America. It is the first world power, but people also aren’t happy. I realized that what people need is something India can give: spiritual knowledge.” A few minutes later, the power goes out.

For a few moments outside the ashram, with our group dancing wildly to the drums and chants of “Holi Hai!” no one noticing the dogs chasing the monkeys up and over the walls, and even later, sitting together on the floor of the pitch-black basement, it feels as if maybe we have all finally submitted to this deeply foreign and mysterious place. But after this we will get back aboard our bus and go, of all places, to the Best Western Radha Ashok, where we will hide out until it is safe to carry on to Agra. This, I think, reminds everyone that no matter how much we submit during this short sojourn, we are only scratching the surface.

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Indians join in an impromtu dance during the flag lowering ceremony at the border with Pakistan. (Aili McConnon)

After putting our bags down in our hotel in Amristar and feeling rested from a five-hour train ride from Delhi, our group drove to Wagah to observe the ceremonial closing of the border with Pakistan.

In the last several years, the border between these two rival nations has been opened up; transnational train service was launched this year and people pass through the border crossing here on a daily basis.

On Sunday, the gathering of several thousand Indians to watch soldiers from both countries lower their respective flags, was a moment of celebration. The ceremony has become more of a tourist attraction in recent years rather an epicenter of international hostility.

Nirmal Singh Bishad drew cheers from the crowd when he ran back and forth down the road leading to the border with an Indian flag larger than his adolescent body. But his act of joyous patriotism was not an act of aggression toward Pakistan, he insisted.

“They are our friends,” he said, “not our enemies.”

As the Indian troops prepared to approach the gate, the crowd chanted “Hindustan Zindabad,” which in Hindi means, “Long live India.” The Pakistani crowd just yards away chanted in Urdu, “Pakistan Zindabad,” or “Long Live Pakistan.”

Men danced in the path leading up to the border to Indian music before the flags were pulled down just before sunset. The Indian troops stomped with such ferocity and marched with such exaggerated exuberance it drew chuckles from the crowd.

“It is fake aggression,” Delhi-based journalist Mannika Chopra said in reference to the stern faces the Indian troops give to their Pakistani counterparts. “It’s a tourist thing.”

The arbitrary border between the two countries was designed by the same colonial force, Britain, which exploited the subcontinent for its resources. The two countries inherited these borders when they gained independence from Britain in August 1947. The riots that resulted from partition ended in nearly 2 million deaths in this part in India.

While many people on both sides of the border today came to celebrate their countries rather than to show aggression toward one another, Chopra explained that there are deeper tensions. Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have both worked to open up this border due to the post-9/11 political climate and international pressure, but both have to appease important constituents to maintain their political power. Musharaf must play to the interests of Islamic extremists and Singh must recognize the interests of right wing, Hindu nationalists.

That is why there are two faces of the ceremony on the border. For the Indian tourists coming from as far away as the capital of New Delhi and the southern city of Chennai, the meeting of green clad Indian soldiers with black clad Pakistani soldiers is a source of both entertainment and national pride. But with India’s new nuclear deal with the United States there is the possibility for a rise in tension that would give the soldiers seemingly acted hostile nature a little bit of sincerity.

"It’s bizarre,” Chopra said.

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