Another early (5:30am) start today, this time in order to get to the banks of the Ganges River in time to see the start of the days activities. The river is called Ganga by Hindus and is worshipped as the god Ganga by them, and is one of the four mothers every Hindu has.

The group's bus took us to within 1 kilometer of the river and despite the early hour traffic was pretty chaotic and definitely cacophonous with horns blaring as drivers signaled "I am coming through". The walk to the river was an equally chaotic affair as while there was some lessening of vehicle traffic it was more than made up for by people. Our guide told us that this was a good example of India's sea of humanity

The river was a surreal scene. A light mist over the area, a few boats on the water, lots of people on the edge and a wall of buildings stretching up both left and right on our side of the river. Running down from the buildings to the water were many sets of wide steps that afforded the "devout" access to the water for their ceremonial bathing.

The buildings that lined the river's edge are mostly river side palaces built by past royalty, but now definitely a bit less than "royal". The bank opposite us was without any buildings as it is a lowland flood plain.

Our guide found us a boat and boatman to shuttle us up and down the river for a while so we could watch the goings on, such as people bathing, washing clothes, setting little floating candles adrift, feeding seagulls.

At the end of our "river cruise" we headed to wards an area of the river where there is no bathing, but where cremations are held all day and all night. It was really a most remarkable sight, in, around, and on top of almost every flat surface were piles of timber, a stockpile for cremations.

There were a few smoldering piles of ashes from pyres that were complete and a few that were still burning but down to only a small blaze. We were told by one of the attendants that each fire burns for about 3 hours and that they have around 150 pyres per day. We saw a group of people sifting through the ashes of completed pyres for gold left-overs from the burned deceased - a bit grisly.

We finished the mornings activities with a walk through the narrow lanes just back from the river and into the bus for a visit to a set of temples and a museum before returning to the hotel for a break before another trip to the river to see the "end of day" rituals.

Our second visit to the river started at 4:30pm with the hiring of some rickshaws, it seemed the traffic was way too thick for our small tour bus. As we would soon find out it was actually too thick for any form of transport but somehow our rickshaw rider/driver managed to snake his way through the traffic. If the traffic in the morning was noisy and chaotic, then I have run our of words for the afternoon - mind bending maybe.

At the river we found the same boat and boatman as the morning and he moved us into position and moored us close to shore waiting for "proceedings to begin" - though at this point we did not know what the "proceedings" were. Turns out that the rivers edge is equipped with a series of platforms and from these platforms "priests" from the Brahman caste perform an "end of day" ritual that "closes the river" for the day to bathing. The ritual involves a lot of swinging of various artifacts, a vast amount of bell ringing, and some blowing of horns made from sea shells. Amazing, but also bewildering.

When we got back to the hotel we thought the day was over - but we did not count on the three weddings that were taking place in the hotels grounds. Just after dinner we noticed a lot of lights in the hotel fore court and went out to see what was going on. Well there was a procession of wedding guests and a groom being led by a brass band and a parade of women carrying "chandeliers" on their heads. To our amazement, these women were proceeded by an electric generator mounted on the back of a bicycle and electrical cables ran from the generator to each of the women's heads. Simply amazing - seems like occupational health and safety is an unknown discipline here.

Well that got an evening of wedding-watching under way and we spent a couple of hours watching one particular wedding. We even got invited into the celebration area by one of the (apparently influential) guests. The spectacle was breath taking. A live floor show ran for over an hour before the bride arrived (just to keep every one entertained), the groom arrived on a horse and the bride descended from above the stage on a special apparatus. We guessed that the parents of both bride and groom where not without money.