I took his kindness as a good omen for the visit to Varanasi, also known as Benares. The city conjures images of a most exotic kind: the sacred Ganges, innumerable places of worship, winding alleys filled with shops selling the famous silks of the area, pilgrims, gurus, and finally the ghats - steps leading down to the river.

One of Varanasi's main attractions are the ghats. They are a series of shallow steps leading from street level down to the river. About a hundred of these are strung along the riverbank. Their purpose is to lead the pilgrims into the sacred river for a dip and prayers.
Arriving at an upstream ghat before sunrise, I was prepared for a spectacle. Sleepily, I got out of the taxi that had brought me downtown. I passed market stalls, with their fruits and vegetables, trinkets and housewares still under wraps. The 'little' merchants, however -very young boys and girls- were up and about and spotted me instantly. Bright-eyed and enterprising, they inticed me to look at their tiny bottles with colored powders, or dabs of wax on a leaf to light like a candle and float on the river. A little girl proved to be most persistent and we traded a few rupees for candles.

The previous day, I had arranged to float the holy Ganga to take in the sights of Varanasi. The guide arrived, and huddling in the boat is the oarsman, a young man with his Kashmiri shawl wrapped tightly around head and shoulders, in the fashion of Northern India. One of his cheeks protrudes - he is chewing his morning ration of betel.

We pass by ghats where men stand hip-deep in the river, pounding laundry on rocks. Nearby, on steps, the laundry is laid out to dry. We pass the cremation ghats, where piles of ashes still smolder from the previous evening's funeral pyres. On the river, a few fishermen are out for their morning catch. In an old wooden boat, a fisherman with a large turban wrapped around his head looks like someone who may have done the same, looked the same, a thousand years ago.

Each morning on the river has a timeless quality. Pilgrims come and take their ritual baths in the Ganges, Brahmin priests sit by the bank and chant prayers, and others make their last journey in this life, their ashes becoming part of the river. The rising sun casts an orange glow over water and city, a mosque appears in the hazy distance and Varanasi shows its magical face.

I wander along the local chouk - the fruits and vegetables on display would be a painter's delight. Dark purple eggplant, neatly stacked near fiery red peppers and piles of small bananas. An open cart of popped corn, a cow being shooed away by a woman hovering protectively over her baskets of tomatoes and onions. An open sewage ditch stagnant between shops and market stalls. And ever-present, in droves, the mass of people walking, shoving, strolling; hurrying or nonchalantly going their way, headed inevitably toward the "great intersection" in this part of the city.

It is a sight to behold: four busy, main arteries intersecting without any traffic signs and a dead, old red-light dangling forlornly above the chaos that unfolds around me. There is no demarcating line between people on foot and roaring trucks, cows, buses, honking taxis, rikshas, motorcycles, bicycles, simple farm carts drawn by mules or men, and more cows. They are all pushing their way through the heart of the crossing at the same time, moving in opposite directions.

That, however, was a constant note everywhere in India: contrast; the extremes of abundance and poverty, uncountable homeless people making their bed on sidewalks next to shops selling anything money can buy; chaotic congestion and immeasurable vastness of open spaces. It is a place that requires a deeper immersion, more time and effort, and more patience on the part of a traveler than any other country I ever visited. It fascinates one minute and is puzzling the next; but mostly it teaches and never stops beckoning me to return.