I love Varanasi, I always say it's the most romantic city in the world, but it's also the city that reminds us that life is ephemeral, fragile and everything is impermanent.
Two places on the ghats are intended for cremation, 300 corpses on each ghats a day are given to the flames, the bonfires operate night and day without interruption.
The bodies cross the streets of Varanasi, the last trip, the families follow the corpses. The family will carry the body, it will go around the pyre 3 times and deposit the corpse on the wood of the cremation.
A friend told me one day "look here my grandfather, my grandmother all my family was burned here and this place I want to be when I'm gone."
It is forbidden to take photos out of respect, indeed families accompany their dead, I am always shocked that some are trying to take pictures.
Before the cremation ghats there is a scale and many people pass by without knowing what it is.
This is the last weighed, it is on this scale that the wood will be weighed according to the weight of the corpse because it takes 3 hours to reduce a body to ashes and according to the weight of the body it is not the same amount of wood.
And this has always been the case since the creation of Varanasi, the oldest city in the world inhabited without interruptions.
