Benaras Exploration…

What comes to your mind, when you think about benaras ? Do you think about pan or think about saree ? “If you are in benaras and haven't tasted benarasi pan, then your trip to benaras is of no use. If you are a female then you must be thinking about the benarasi saree. If you are divinic in nature then Kashi Vishwanath Temple of Lord shankar is one of the best place to visit you.

The day after the ganga ghat visit, we had planned to visit the Vishwanath temple. It is one of the twelve jyotirlingas of Lord Shiva. ( Till that time I'd visited only one jyotirlinga, while I was at college. Once I went to take the exam at Indore, then some of my friends planned to visit Ujjain, then I had Mahakaal darshan. He was one of the angriest shiv that I had ever seen, long moustache with big eyes full of fire. Priests decorate lord Shiv daily in different manner at Ujjain.) Now God has blessed me to visit second jyotirlinga at Kashi. In the afternoon, after training we got ready and moved to temple. On the way before catching taxi, there was a tea maker; Amit, one among us, said, “ See, this tea maker is serving tea in earthen pot ( locally called as kullad ), tea in that pot has a great taste, it gives feel of being pure traveller ”. And we ordered six kullad tea. Vivek used to prefer somewhat cooler tea instead of smoking hot tea. He left the tea for a while and after a minute when he observed, there was a drop in tea level from top. He shouted, “Ek to saala 30ml ke kullad, upar se aadha bhaap ban gayi aur aadhi ye sokh gaya”. We all laughed, actually we were also thinking the same and finished our tea. Then we hired an auto-rickshaw and moved towards our destination. The fare was reasonable approximately 20 INR per person from diesel loco works campus. The auto driver dropped us near temple. Then we entered in the temple area. As this was one of the jyotirlinga, hence a long unended queue hadn't surprised us. We followed the queue and stand behind the last person. It seemed that it would take long enough to have a look of Lord Shiva. I and Jazz (we call Jasdeep as Jazz in a friendly manner) didn't want to follow that endless queue so we told others to follow the queue and we ran away in search of other short way. Jazz had been there when he was small so he had some idea of other substitute way. In the meantime, I and Jazz observed a policeman who was guiding a family in going to the main temple by some short cut way; we followed him. Usually police follows the culprit, but this time we were following the policeman. We were scared too, because following a policeman in new strange place was risky, specially when it was in Uttar Pradesh, yet we followed him. There were too many streets and they were narrow too. The policeman was leading us by approximately 20 steps, after two-three streets we could no longer see him as he followed one of the street from that square. Then we returned to call our friends by that way, because we were sure that this way would take lesser time as compared to that of previous one.

Narrow Benarasi Galiyan

Benarasi's galiyan is famous for its narrowness and we forgot the way by which we came, but somehow we escaped out. Then Jasdeep called other friends but till that time they had crossed the first barrier, then we decided to explore these narrow streets. We were enjoying, singing the song tu ban jaa gali banaras ki… but there was a fear of being lost also. Jazz told, what if they had view of Lord Shiva first and the way we adopted take more time… I smiled and motivated him in a slight postive manner. After searching for a while we found the right way. We observed gate no. 2, 3, 4 and took gate no. 2 as that was less crowded. A monk inoculated my forehead by sandalwood. We visited the Lord Shiva Glory, prayed Him to bless my family and friends, meditated there for a while. The whole surrounding was divinic, there were some monks with ash on their whole body with long beard and mustache. But most of them were professionals, their interest was only in money which was donated by pilgrims. We came back and sat on Dasashwamedhghat and was waiting for our friends. Our friends were still in queue at that time. It took one and a half hour more to them to visit the temple. After some time Jazz phone rang, that was call of Vivek. We all met again and started roaming near the vicinity of temple. There was a Pan wala, nearby Kashi chaat bhandar. We ordered sweet pan from there.

Benarasi Pan Shop

He prepared pan with full interest by rubbing many of its ingredients like cherry, gulkand, natural kattha which was less reddish in color etc. I have never seen that many ingriedients in a single pan in my whole life. There were varieties of pan like sada pan, kesariya pan, benarasi pan and many more. While giving pan to us he gave some advice to swallow its juice slowly without chewing it.

After some time the whole pan dissolved in my mouth. The tongue was not that much red as it used to be after eating pan, perhaps kattha might be natural. We were having feeling of Amitabh ji in khai ke Paan benaras wala… Those were unforgettable moments.

Then we had aaloo chaat and samosa chaat at Kashi chaat Bhandar. Aditya liked that chaat bhandar too much. Then Jasdeep suggested us to have dosa at one of the thela nearby that chaat centre. Then we moved to DLW's rest house.

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Kapurthala visit before Vaishno Devi Mata Darshan

Varanasi Flashback

An evening in Varanasi

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